I know you’ve all been hanging on the edge of your seats to discover how the war with my mystery garden nemesis pans out. We spent all last week bringing the strawberry box inside until we could find the time and energy to tackle the problem in a more permanent way. My friend Dave’s suggestion in the comments was that we take care of it by means of a BB gun and hunting blind, but we don’t have space for a hunting blind on our balcony. Of course, we don’t believe in capital punishment just for eating our delicious strawberries, although I started to reconsider this stance when I sustained a spider bite bringing the box in one night. It was my second spider bite already this summer and it still itches, almost a week later.

Yesterday, we finally had the time to deal with it. We got out the bird netting and bamboo sticks left over from when we made a protective cage around our 2′x6′ garden box last year (this is not our first time tangling with thieving neighbourhood critters) and some cotton string and made a strawberry cage.

Strawberry cage

We were able to leave the strawberries outside all night last night and not a single bite or pilfered berry. Although we haven’t been brining the onions in at night, they have also gone unmolested.

Now that that’s fixed, I just need to wait for this spider bite to heal.

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