Painting Strawberries for the Garden, Easy!
One of the reasons pinterest is so fun is all the great DIY projects (and recipes) you can find on there! Nothing beats seeing the final project to get you to try something new. I pinned this to my “crafts” board, but it can fit in the “garden” board as well. I simply put it in crafts because it was something that I wanted to do with the boys.
The DIY originally came from Lee Wismer. He has a step by step tutorial that is excellent! It was then pinned to a blog and one of the people I follow on pinterest said “Stones painted as strawberries when put around strawberry plants in the spring will keep birds from eating your berries when they ripen because the birds will think the ripened berries are stones.”
A note on that claim. It might work. I have not tried it yet (I will and I'll let you know, but that will not be for quite a while since I do not have my strawberry patch yet! Oh, the woes of just having moved into the house!) It definitely would not work on transient birds since it would take “training” the birds to realize your strawberries are rocks for this to go as planned. Birds that are new to your area will not have the time to learn that. There is a chance that it will work on birds that have set house on your property, but no promises!
That said, it was a fun project. It took almost all day because of the steps involved. We waited 30-60 minutes between each step in order to make sure the rocks were completely dry. There are ten total steps. The boys had a great time (5 and 3). They were involved with every step, including picking out the rocks (which gave us some rather odd shaped strawberries).
The final step (varnish) was really important so don't skip it! It was the most expensive part of the project, but we have plenty more for future projects.
Lots of Steps, but most the time was waiting
Supplies:
- 7 acrylic paints on sale 5 for $2 at Michael's – $2.80
- Spray on varnish – $5.99
- Rocks from our yard – Free
Total Cost = $8.79
Directions:
Please see Lee's site for an EXCELLENT step by step with pictures, but in a nutshell we:
- Picked out our rocks
- Painted them white, waited…
- Painted them red, waited…
- Painted the leaves, waited…
- Painted some highlights, waited…
- Painted the seed “holes”, waited…
- Painted the seeds, waited…
- Sprayed with varnish!
Related Posts:
- Sweet Strawberry (alexandreacreative.wordpress.com)
- Tiered Whiskey Barrel Strawberry Planter DIY (untrainedhousewife.com)
- Strawberry Fields Forever (fcoronin.com)
- Diggin In': Time to Plant that Strawberry Patch (miamiherald.com)
- Strawberry Almond Breakfast Bread (ahealthylifeforme.com)
This is kind of hilarious! I know that my daughter would absolutely enjoy this project. Although, I know that she would be the first to want to take photographs/videos of those poor birds experimenting by pecking at the rocks. It makes me wonder if blueberries glued to dowel rods or something similar, placed around a blueberry bush would help deter the birds as well.