Tobacco Netting. Why the heck is it so hard to find? If you aren’t familiar with the area we are in we are nicely situated near some really great farming area in northern CT, mostly tobacco farms. Our blueberries that we transplanted early this year had started to turn and after losing some Raspberries and all our Gooseberries to critters I was panicking wanting to save our blueberries! The best solution we came up with is Tobacco Netting. We tried the “bird netting” the black plastic netting with two inch or larger squares. Absolutely useless. It worked great on our red currants but the blueberries poked through and were readily available to any and all birds. We used it in the interim while both Jim and I scoured the internet trying to find where to buy tobacco netting.
Driving to Manchester, CT one day I saw a farm with rows and rows of blueberries all covered in netting. It was 9 am in the morning but of course the crazy person that I am I knocked on the door of the closest house. This very sweet elderly woman came out and told me they had ordered it from a catalog, but couldn’t remember the name. She also said that shade tobacco farmers “put it out” when they were done with it, and that I might find some on “the side of the road near a tobacco farm.” Not one little part of me wanted to stop in periodically to every tobacco farm in the region and see if they had deposited it on the side of the road, nor did I want to wander onto their property and beg for netting.
The Broom method, quite effective!
Every where I went that week I asked about it, Tractor Supply, Gardener’s Dream and A.W. Browns, some people didn’t know what I was talking about, others tried to sell me the black bird netting we had tried and the man at Tractor Supply said the same thing the elderly woman said. Let’s just say I was beyond frustrated. Someone suggested Agway so we looked it up and found three in our vicinity, Enfield, CT, Ellington, CT and Palmer, MA. I called Ellington first, they said they were all out. I called Palmer and they told me they had several different sizes in stock and to come on in, just to be sure I called Enfield. They said they had some in stock as well. Since I was going to be in that area I stopped in there first. They had one roll, 14′ by 24′. Definitely not big enough, but I bought it anyway. The next day Jim and I (using brooms and some major finagling) covered two of the back bushes, it definitely wasn’t enough.
The next day Jim stopped in at Palmer, they didn’t actually have any, and seemed 
to be confused at what we were actually asking for…typical. I felt like giving up. Tobacco netting was like the best kept secret of farmers, and no one wanted to tell us. We even stopped in at a tobacconist and asked if they had the contact numbers for any tobacco farms in the area, both I found online rang and then went to dial tone…OF COURSE. If you can’t tell I was so frustrated. On a whim we decided to stop back into the Agway in Enfield where I had found the one roll before. The day I bought it I had asked when they thought they would get in another roll, the cashier said he didn’t know. I asked who the supplier was and got a halfhearted shrug. We walked in and EUREKA they had four or five rolls of tobacco netting! I literally said “YES!” and fist pumped when I walked in, I’m sure the cashiers thought I was nuts. I’m convinced it’s all a big racket where tobacco farms sell the store their leftovers and get a set price and we silly consumers buy them for $20 a roll. But hey, it was rolled up, nice and neat and it’s probably worth it considering we won’t have to scour roadsides and stuff the pile of netting in the back of our car spreading tobacco dust everywhere.
So there is my very long story of how we finally have nicely covered blueberry bushes and even had our very first 
harvest this morning. So if anyone is looking for tobacco netting, the Agway in Enfield occasionally has it, but god forbid you should ask when they’ll get it back in stock and/or where they got it from. If you’re not in the secret brotherhood of tobacco netting farmers you will never find out. I’m kidding of course…or am I?! We shall never know.
