pests

Last year birds, squirrels and groundhogs got every last apple on the tree, every tomato and efery blackberry before they were ripe enough to harvest. How do I prevent this from happening again?

Dealing with that is a tall order -- you've got problems that extend from the soil line to the tree canopy. Obviously you'll need a wide range of countermeasures.

I had the same problem on tomatoes last year, and am thinking I might put bird netting over some of them. Someone just the other day on this forum, if I recall correctly, said they had good success doing that.

Are you averse to getting dogs or cats? They can keep many a predator at bay, if you let them out enough. Not just their presence, but their smell, and the smell of the hair and poop and pee they leave behind. We are right up against a thickly wooded hill in a well-forested area, and deer are all over the place, but only rarely do they get too close. Same with squirrels. Unfortunately, at my neighbor's place where I grow almost all my stuff, he doesn't have dogs ... and the critters are everywhere, all over the garden and coming right up to the house.

Re fruit in the trees, we've used bird netting before. It can be quite a pain to get over a tree, even for two people. But it can work.

Growing up one of our neighbors had cherry trees and she always hung foil pie pans in them.  Don't know if that would work for groundhogs or not.

I put bird netting up last year and vowed not to do it again, because a couple of mockingbirds got caught up in the netting.  The holes are just big enough for them to stick their heads through, but when they pull back, they get hung or hung up in the netting.

Yesterday, I visited a Joann's that was closing out their store inventory because they are moving to a new location.  I got 20 yards of Tulle for a total of $8.02.  That was a bargain.  I plan to wrap this around my tomato and pepper cages when the fruit starts coming on.  I bought a forest green color to act as shade cloth, as well as protection from the birds.

You might try this for your plants.  The trees are another matter.