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Not quite where you'll find a selection of cheaping baby birds! While there's nothing wrong with the garden rule books, there's lots of little tricks and techniques you can use in the garden that might be a means to an end and save you time and money - the latter being especially important these days! While they're not garaunteed to work each time, if you're prepared to take the risk, often they do. Why not exchange your ideas here?
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i dont pull any think up till i know what it is if it a tree seedling or plant that i like or want i keep it
i,ve got 6 birch trees that i like from seeds and there all different crosses and small bird love birches
now look out for wild flowers bird seed has alot of wild flowers in them so who knows what might come up
trees from seedlings takes a few years to get big and can grow too big for your garden well you then cut them down andf start again the wood from the trees can be allowed rot leave the stums in too for the stag beetles
also you get seedling from your neighbours gardens too and from farther away the birds bring them to the garden from berries they have eaten
the friedly bid watcher
I can concur with Red Robin the opportunities of cultivating plants from seeds. There's no end of tree, shrub and flower seeds that will suddenly spring up. Give them time to see what they are and if you decide you want to keep it, then away you go.Birch, in particular, seed quite prolifically and are great trees for birds - house sparrows eat the seeds, but more noticeably perhaps so do goldfinch, redpoll and siskin. If you only have a small plot you could regularly coppice the tree and keep as a multi-stemmed shrub. Once you have plenty of stems growing, you could cut a proportion (say a third) of them every 3-5 years and so keeping a range of different aged regrowth - better for wildlife. You can save some of the wood for invertebrates in the garden and some of the stems can be used as garden canes. This is what I done with a sycamore in my garden:-Earlier this year, I was going to coppice a large sycamore at the end of my garden. As I started thinning the many branches out (it had been cut down sometime in its past), I noticed there was one decent sized straight trunk. I decided to retain this and lift the crown to allow light into my proposed future shrub bed below. The wood was divided up between, leaving it under the tree and around my newly constructed pond to provide valuable habitat for invertebrates. The remainder was cut for fire wood and bean poles, and the thin twiggy brash as kindling for my fires. Not a bit of that tree has gone to waste and I've shared it equally between me and the wildlife! Over the summer, there's been some regrowth from cut stems at the base of the tree - this I can harvest a proportion of every few years as small garden canes and if I allow some to grow bigger as replacement bean poles when the ones I have now finally rot.
Hi John
And not only seeds. Many years back a 2-3 feet branch of my forsythia flopped down onto the lawn. My (then) husband succeeded in cutting it off from the plant by running over it with the petrol mower. The end was thoroughly "mashed up" but as the stem was in flower I stuck it into an already planted up tub - basically just to enjoy the flowers until it died. Well, it went on flowering all summer but no leaves came. Come the autumn, the flowers died back and so I assumed, as you do, that that was the end of it. Walking past it I took hold of "the dead twig" and carried on walking, expecting it to simply come with me. Not a bit of it - I nearly fell over because it had been busy all summer putting out enough roots to gain a remarkably firm purchase in that tub!
The necessity of bird-watching is a really good reason for avoiding all forms of housework.
The dust will still be there tomorrow - the birds may not be!
Don’t get me started on cheap and free, I’ve got a garden full of recycled, home made and time saving projects. I hate seeing anything go to waste , I can always find a new use for it. I can’t walk past a building site without tapping up the foreman for any damaged bricks, blocks or wood.
Our local recycling centre is one of my regular haunts, there is not much you can’t find there for next to nothing.
This is the cold frame I made from an off cut of conservatory roof (£2 from the recycling centre) and off cuts of timber (free from building site). The one thing I have found on larger project is time and money always seem to balance out, the cheaper it is the more time it takes.
Build it and they will come.
Hi to All,
I am lucky that in my work we use a large amount of wood and loads of offcuts just get dumped.
I decided to save some of them and made myself a new bird table the only thing I had to buy was some shelf brackets to make it more rigid (optional you could use wood) and some feeders. Total cost £11.65p. All I need now is some birds to find it and start feeding .
Graham
Be Inspired,
Dream it, Crave it, Work for it, Live it.
That’s brilliant, I wish my DIY skills were that good
Unknown said: That’s brilliant, I wish my DIY skills were that good
I wish my DIY skills existed at all!
It is a truly superb bird table. Have you thought of setting up a "cottage industry"?
Squirrel B said: That’s brilliant, I wish my DIY skills were that good
Hi,
Thanks to you both for your comments. To be honest you dont need a lot of skill it's more carefull planning and a bit of thought anyone with some basic tools could build one. As for starting a cottage industry my son has mentioned this but it would be down to me having the time. If I did do it, it would have to be to order only.
With regard to the above bird table I did a bit of looking round at the weekend in local pet stores and saw a similar one marked at £85.00 but to be honest it did not look that well made so considering the cost of mine I think it is a very good saving for a few hours work( which I don't really call work as I enjoy doing it).
Further more I had my son pay me a visit at the weekend and it's the first time he has seen it. He asked me to make him one for christmas. Taking this into consideration I am going to try and do one that looks a bit more unusual. I have the idea of building a bird table with a planting area incorporated into the base. If it goes to plan I will put some photo's for you to view and give you a brakedown of the cost.
I’ll look forward to the results. Are you going to try your hand at other things too, such as nesting boxes? They are so expensive to buy.
I have some nesting boxes plans and was going to make some this winter.