Will the birds like their home-grown muesli?

I love feeding the birds. It's better than TV for me, watching to see who's visiting and what they're up to.

Of course most of what they eat is seed I've bought in from the RSPB. But I do like the idea of my garden providing some of it too.

So this year I've got the bit between my teeth, and this week I've been sowing a cornfield.

First step, prepare the ground. I'm sowing a large area - 300 square metres - so I went at it with a rotavator, but this works just as well in a small bed and is even worth trying in a large planter. 

The land I'm sowing was under a closed canopy of rotting plum trees until a month ago, so I don't have a significant weed burden to worry about, so rotavating is all I'm doing to prepare the soil.

Then it's onto the seeds. I bought 600g of cornfield annual wildflower mix - the basics are Field Poppy, Corn Chamomile, Cornflower, Corncockle, Corn Marigold, plus I went a bit posh and got a mixture with a bit of Opium Poppy, Field Forget-me-not and Night-flowering Catchfly.

I also bought 600g of mixed cereals - oats, wheat and barley.

I split them into six cereal bowls (and then got in trouble when there were no clean ones for dinner). This meant that I could better gauge how evenly I was sowing them across the plot, rather than having to try and guess an even rate over the whole area.

Then it was a case of broadcasting the cereal seed and raking them in so they are buried an inch or so down, safe from pigeons, followed by scattering the annual seeds on the surface.

And that's it - nature I'm hoping will do the rest.

Here is a photo from Hidcote where they had sown such a mix, minus the cereals.

A late winter or spring sowing tends to have few poppies (sadly) but I'll happily settle for something that looks like this.Especially if the sparrows and finches take up the invitation too!