Hi. I'm Dave and have been weeding under my feeders and the smell caused by the seed in the ground is very unpleasant. Is there anything I can use to neutralise the smells without causing harm to either the birds or my plants? Thanks
I would dig it well in and let the earth sanitise it, also move your feeders around to stop big build ups!
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Wendy, thanks for your advice. Unfortunately I can't move the feeders; the pole carrying the feeders is in a half barrel containing soil and rocks, making it extremely heavy and impossibleto move. Besides, my garden is so small there's no other place for it. Digging in may be possible, to an extent. It's a very small garden and there are shrubs whose roots would prevent digging in under them.
I was hoping there was another way, perhaps treating the soil with something.
Hello David, that would be my advice as well. You don't have to dig deep, just a hand fork and turn the soil over. Maybe cut back on the food that you put out as well. Just a word of advice, as this is an open site, you may want to change your user name from your private, email, you don't want to get bombarded with trolls, or spam and rubbish emails. Hit the little circle top right, hit profile, down the right a bit hit edit profile, change your name in the box at the top and save profile.
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We had the same issue a few years ago and found buying different bird seed with less powdery stuff in it (cannot be more precise as was three or four year back and cannot remember!) stopped the accumulation under the bird feeders.
Do you have trays fixed to your feeders? Only other way I can think of is to put paper to cover tub surface, hold down with a couple of heavy stones then dispose of when messy ... most of smell will be coming from bird poo I imagine?