Compost--it's Not Complicated!

Composting isn’t complicated. There are shelves of books, articles galore in every garden magazine out there, and a million or so Web sites to tell you how. But taking the subject down to its basic core, it’s just a matter of piling up organic stuff and letting it rot. Mother Nature does it all the time, breaking down natural debris, feeding the soil as it decays.

By composting in your own yard, you are taking advantage of the free stuff Nature gives you to build your soil so your plants can grow to their full potential, plus keeping a lot of stuff out of the landfills.
 
A compost pile isn’t the most attractive thing to have in a garden so choose a level area that is out of the way but accessible to a wheelbarrow and a spading fork, with a little space to work it. Behind a garage or garden shed would be a good location. Ideally, it should be located away from trees as tree roots tend to grow up into that nice, nutrient-rich compost. You won’t want to have to dig them out when it’s time to put your finished compost on the garden, but if you have no choice, a double layer of landscape fabric or even old carpet laid nap side down on the ground underneath will help slow down invading roots.

Spring is a good time to start, when you are cleaning up flower beds, raking leaves left from fall, and mowing lawns.

You need at least two piles, or bins. Start by filling one with a thick layer of leaves, a layer of green stuff, and a couple shovels of topsoil or composted manure as an activator to get the decomposition process kick-started (or buy a bag of compost starter from your local garden center); then layers of grass, organic waste from your kitchen, more leaves, etc. When the bin is full, start flipping it over into the second bin with a spading fork, beginning with a layer of leaves; adding more organic waste and garden debris and covering that up from the first bin, and so on. Repeat until that one is full, then reverse the process. After you flip the contents of the two bins thoroughly three or four times, you should have some pretty good compost.

Bins can be built of a variety of materials. We have three, two 4' x 4' wire ones, and a double one made with four 4' x 8’ hog panels, but we have an acre of trees that shed leaves and a lot of garden debris. The average gardener might not need one that big. You don’t really even need a bin, a pile will do; but a bin keeps things contained and neater. Two three-sided (open on the front) bins can be constructed with fence posts and 2”x 4” fence wire, 3’ high; pallets on edge in the same configuration, snow fencing, picket fence; or if you are handy with tools, you can get as fancy as you like with boards and chicken wire. Two 3’x 3’ bins side by side is a good size to start with.

One of the easiest and most efficient ways is to stack two layers of straw bales on edge in three-sided bin form, with the front open for easy access. When the bales start to rot after a season, simply break them up, put them in the compost, and build a new set of bins with fresh bales. An interesting side to the straw bale bins is that you can plant in the top bales, as in straw bale gardening; grow some cucumbers, tomatoes or pumpkins in there. The ideal spot for this type of compost bin would be in the middle of your vegetable garden.

So what can you put in your compost? Most anything organic. For successful composting you need four things: carbon, nitrogen, moisture, and air. Brown stuff like fallen leaves, corn stalks, newspaper, shredded paper, paper towels and napkins is carbon. Green stuff like lawn clippings, garden debris, any kind of vegetable waste from the kitchen is nitrogen; also hair, human or animal, eggshells, chicken or rabbit manure, coffee grounds. About one part nitrogen to two parts carbon is a good ratio. Wood ashes are also good, providing potash, but don’t overdo it. Too much of that is not a good thing. Rain is usually enough moisture; if not, soak it down once in a while but don’t keep it wet. Air is mixed in when you turn it.

We keep a covered pail in the kitchen for vegetable scraps and anything compostable, emptying it into the pile once a day in the summer, every two or three days in the winter. Leftover coffee, juices, tea, water drained from cooking all go in there making a soupy mix. Top it off with plenty of water, which makes it easier to dump and also adds moisture to the compost. Always cover kitchen scraps with a shovelful or two from the other bin, plus dry grass, leaves, or garden debris.

What not to put in there: anything plastic or metal. It’s irritating to have to pick junk out of your finished compost. No meat scraps and bones; they encourage animal scavengers. No used kitty litter, grass or weeds that have been treated with weed killers, or used diapers—they won’t break down. No seedy weeds; weed seeds will live through the composting process and be spread around when the compost is used. No diseased garden debris, same reason. Tree branches take too long to break down.

A working compost pile should feel warm, almost hot inside, even in winter. It may even steam. You are going to see pill bugs, earthworms and other insects in there, as well as spiders and beetles looking for a good meal. Don’t freak out, that’s a good thing. They are the workers, breaking down raw materials and turning them into useable compost.

Depending on how often the compost is turned, it could be ready in 6 or 8 weeks; longer over the winter. It’s finished when it looks mostly like soil.  Sift it using a plant flat or plastic crate over a wheelbarrow, tossing uncomposted stuff back into the bottom of the bin. Save a couple of shovels full to restart the next batch.

 

Here’s more info from the U. of Illinois Extension, including problem solving: http://web.extension.illinois.edu/homecompost/building.cfm and plenty on building bins and composting from the U. of Missouri Extension: http://extension.missouri.edu/p/g6957nd

Do your garden a favor and give composting a try.


"Unless you are in a race or something, there are only two “rules” for successful composting: Stop throwing all that stuff away, and pile it up somewhere.”
                                       ~Felder Rushing

 "Speaking of Gardens " column, published in The Joplin Globe, February 16, 2014

Will Spring Ever Come, Poppy Seed and a Garden Show

The crocus that hasn't been. January 27, 2013

 Spring usually starts coming in slow fireworks in the Ozarks by this time of year with the first early snow crocus in the last week of January, but it seems like this winter has gone on forever, with nary a sign of blooming anything. Or maybe it just feels that way after being spoiled by the mild winters of the past few years. I find myself wandering aimlessly in the garden, looking for any signs that the “song of the turtledove might soon be heard in the land”, but the ground is still frozen, and according to the weather forecast, it looks like it might be that way for a while. We need any moisture we can get, so I’m not complaining about the snow.

A few early dandelions are blooming, and weeds though they are, at this time of the year, they are drops of sunshine that make me smile on gloomy days.

Who says I’m a weed? I’m so pretty!

To quote Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn; “It's spring fever. That is what the name of it is. And when you've got it, you want - oh, you don't quite know what it is you do want, but it just fairly makes your heart ache, you want it so!”

That’s it. Spring fever. I’ve got garden catalogs scattered over the house, with lists of seeds and plants that I simply cannot do without. Garden web sites are bookmarked with “shopping carts” full of would-be orders parked and waiting for me to make up my mind. I always over-order, so there is a basket of seeds left over from last year that wants sorting to see what I really “need”.

A small jar of poppy seeds saved from last summer to sow after a February snow, will be scattered this week where I want them to grow. The seeds are tiny and should be mixed with a little sand so they don’t all land in one spot when they are broadcast. These are Papaver somniferum, annual poppies with big fluffy, silky flowers, single and double in a myriad of luscious colors; but tangerine and mauve are all that are left here so last fall I ordered a few new varieties to introduce. My son-in-law brought me seeds for black ones from California and also shared some other colors from his own garden.

Tangerine red poppy

The original ones that my seed came from are undoubtedly the old-fashioned “breadseed” or opium poppies, which have been growing in America’s cottage gardens for many generations; “passed along” from one gardener to another, indispensably useful in both medicine and cooking to the early settlers. The new cultivars are a peony-flowered cross but the true type can still be found in many garden catalogs.

They grow best for me in gravely soil, and are happily at home along the gravel walk that circles the south side of the deck, in the accidental flower bed that grows there, in company with the Queen Anne's lace, black-eyed Susans and larkspur that have also planted themselves there. Growing them from seed is the best option as they have a tap root and resent being transplanted, although it can be done carefully with very young seedlings. They bloom in late May, and in June, the stems are cut when the pods mature, but before they pop open and disburse their seed. Then they are hung upside-down on the lattice that encloses the side of the deck, so the seeds get “planted” right there where I want them to grow. They won’t germinate until the next spring, but I believe in going by Mother Nature's schedule, and She plants them in mid-summer.  Some seed is saved for late winter planting or to share. The empty pods are later kept for dried arrangements and fall wreaths.

 

Note: As poppy seeds need light to germinate, they should just be scattered on the ground and not covered with soil.

Shirley, California and other interesting poppies are annuals that grow easily in most sunny gardens. They are on my garden lists too, but I missed the spring window this year to order and get them in time for planting here, so it will have to be for fall.  

 

Oriental poppies are perennials that can be purchased as plants. Put them where they won’t be disturbed as they don’t care for transplanting either and are likely to turn their toes up and die if they are moved.  A big clump of them has grown by the front gate as long as this garden has existed, so they are very long-lived indeed. They haven’t reseeded much; in 50 years time there are only three more plants even though I always try to make sure the seeds don't just get flung to the winds. Maybe the birds are getting them.

 Bright red corn poppies, the "remembrance" poppy, Papaver rhoeas L, or Flanders poppies as they were called because they were growing in the battlefields during World War I, were immortalized in the poem “In Flanders’ Fields” by John McCrae, and have become the symbol of Memorial Day veterans. They are also annuals. I have never been able to get them started with much success here, but I recently read that seeds should be planted in the fall, and in early spring the ground should be disturbed; then they will germinate and grow. If I can find some seeds I’ll try with them this month anyway, or I’ve got them on my list for fall—planning ahead already! Got it in my garden journal!

 Speaking of planning ahead, the annual Lawn and Garden Show next weekend (February 14-16) in Springfield (MO.) at the fairgrounds is on our calendar, weather permitting. It’s one of our favorite things to do in February, a breath of spring in late winter and full of inspiration for the garden.

 

 

Display at the Lawn and Garden show, 2013

 Educational seminars presented by the Master Gardeners of Greene County will be going on all weekend, packed full of information and how-to’s; and there are wonderful vendor displays, herbs, unusual succulents, the latest tools, whimsical garden ornaments to buy, and much more information and products to make your outdoor living space the best ever.

 

The Greater Ozarks Hosta Society, of which we are members, will have a booth full of fresh spring hostas, and the sight of hostas in full glorious growth is a miracle in midwinter. Next to them will be the Springfield Botanic Garden, Friends of the Garden and Master Gardener's booth, where we get to visit with old friends and make some new ones.

 

We always look for the Missouri Conservation Dept.  booth where they will be giving away free seedling trees.  

 

Ticket cost is minimal and worth every cent. Can you tell I’m excited? It’s what I’m getting for Valentine’s Day!

 

 

In Flanders Fields

 

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

 

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

 

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

                ----Major John McCrae

Always remember.

 

 

Gardening in Straw Bales? What a great idea!

Nothing quite beats the taste of fresh, homegrown vegetables that I can just step out the door to pick, and go straight to the pot while the warmth of the sun is still in them. I quit years ago trying to grow veggies here because all I was doing was feeding the local wildlife, but I may try once more, keeping the deer at bay with repellents and hoping the descendants of the groundhogs that we trapped out a couple of years ago don’t move back in or the raccoons claim it for their own.

I am intrigued by straw bale gardens, and since my only true sunny spot is within the root zone of a huge black walnut, I think I can grow my veggies above the ground where they won’t be poisoned by the juglone in the walnut roots that is anathema to most vegetables, and at the same time maybe control the critter invasion. We already grow tomatoes and peppers in pots, but I would like to have radishes and lettuce in spring, and especially kale, spinach and chard for smoothies and salads. Maybe even a few early peas, green beans and potatoes, but those are my choices; apparently you can grow most any vegetable and some flowers this way.

I have a space at the end of my small fenced herb garden, about 10’ x 15’, where now there is only a patch of multiplier, or winter onions. I have those in another spot also so I won’t miss that patch, and I think I can get 4 or 5 straw bales in there. I’ll get my bales in February from a local garden center, so they can sit there until planting time and “condition”, or compost slightly, which takes approximately 2-4 weeks, depending on rainfall. If you are lucky, you might get some old bales in the spring from a farmer or garden center that have been sitting outside all winter, and are already partly “pre-conditioned” for you.

The idea is to plant the seeds or plants directly in the tops of the bales. Some sources like to open up holes in the tops of the bales and put some potting soil in there, others prefer to plant directly into the composted straw, where they grow like, well, weeds! The straw holds moisture, and as the insides of the bales decay, they provide a rich growing medium for your plants.

A spot that gets at least 6 hours of sun a day is needed to grow veggies. Since you aren’t digging in the ground, straw bales can be placed anywhere, one or many, even on a patio or driveway. Arrange them in rows with cut sides up, the strings or baling wire on their sides; on landscape fabric if making a garden on a lawn area to keep grass and weeds from growing up into them.

Two weeks before you are ready to plant, wet and fertilize the bales for 10 days to start composting the inner straw. For the first 6 days, put 3 cups of organic fertilizer on each bale every other day, watering the bales thoroughly. Every other day, water the bales. For the next three days, put 1 ½ cups of organic fertilizer on each bale and water. On the tenth day, put down 3 cups mixed with phosphorous and potassium (bone meal 50-50 with wood ashes is great) and water in. If you stick your finger in a bale, it should feel hot and moist. Keep moist until ready to plant.

When planting seedlings, use a trowel to separate the straw into holes and add some potting soil to cover any exposed roots. If planting seeds, cover the bale with an inch or so of soil and sow directly into this seedbed. The roots will grow down into the bale.

While you are at it, stick some herbs or annual flowers into the sides of the bale to make it pretty. I think I'll try some strawberries in the sides of mine.

A soaker hose can be laid across the tops of the bales for easy watering. A trellis can be rigged with t-posts and wire to support tomatoes, pole beans, or peas. We may use short posts and a wire to support a row cover to keep cabbage moths from laying eggs on the kale and to prevent rabbits and robins from eating the young plants. I’m going to repurpose some old sheer window curtains but you can buy floating row covers at a garden center. Nylon window screening works well too. They’ll need to be held down with boards, bricks or something to keep them from blowing off.

An internet search on “straw bale gardening” will net lots of information, or there is an excellent book, Straw Bale Gardening, by Joel Karsten. It can probably be found at a local bookstore. If not, they can order it for you or you could find it on Amazon.

Experiment with us. We’ll learn it together!

 

Joplin Globe column, Speaking of Gardens: February 2, 2014

 

Writiing it All Down

Writing It All Down: A  Garden Journal

 How do you keep track of what’s going on in your garden? I’ve seen everything from scrap paper tacked on the garden shed wall to elaborate spread sheets on the computer (horrors, who has time for that?).

I have always admired those beautifully done garden journals with charming little colored-pencil sketches and prose-y writing in a delicate hand. I can’t tell you how much I would love to do one of those, and how many I have started, only to have them disintegrate into a mess of lists, clippings, hasty sketches and stuffed full of would-be catalog orders and confirmations in a matter of weeks. By that time I have lost track of most of my colored pencils anyway and it’s a welter of skipped pages and crossed off bits because I can’t find my eraser and besides I’m writing in it in ballpoint pen. It’s got dirt on it from being dragged out into the garden, some of the pages are slightly wavy and a bit blurred from having gotten wet, and my scribbles have started to look like a Hobbit got hold of it and wrote something in Middle Earth language.

But I still persevere. I take it with me on garden tours, jotting down names of plants I covet and think I really must find, and it goes along to the nurseries and garden centers we visit and nearly every place else. It lives in my tote bag in the spring and summer, (along with my pruners and a small trowel) because, I never know when it might have to be consulted, or something written down. It’s filled with dry pressed flowers, lots of business cards, plant tags, sticky notes, a feather or two, hasty one-line thoughts I don’t want to forget for my blog or column, an occasional quote or poem that I find or write along the way, brochures, addresses of places I want to visit,  garden tours I don’t want to miss, notes for talks I have to give, and sundry other garden and nature bits and pieces.

My garden journal is truly one of my most valuable garden tools, especially with a garden this size.  I record when and what plants I’ve acquired, and I keep notes on what succeeded well (or too well!) and what plants were dismal failures, never to take up soil space again here. Then there are the interminable lists; we have over 500 hostas and when visiting a nursery I need to know that I’m not duplicating them. I keep track of the earliest blooming crocuses, the weather, plant combinations I see and want to try, changes I want to make, what needs divided or relocated. Spring to-do-lists are made in the fall and winter, fall lists in the spring, daily lists every day; not that we always get around to doing all of them. It’s my memory, my nudge when I get lazy, my dialogue with my garden world and the environment.

 

 

A garden journal need not be one of those fancy, prettily bound books from the bookstore, though you might write in it more often if it is. Mine is one of those 5”x 8” blank diaries, a good size to carry along; but it could be a spiral notebook, a sketch diary, a composition book, or even an old zippered Dayrunner that you don’t use any more. (Those are handy, stuff doesn’t fall out of them and you won’t lose your pencil.)  

I’ve divided my pages with tabs to make it easier to find what category I’m looking for, and glued an envelope to the inside back cover. I think that when this one is finally filled, my next one might be loose leaf so I can rip out pages and add new ones, maybe a pocket or two for all those bits and pieces that I keep poking in there, and a few of those plastic photo pages for clipped pictures.

And yes, I’ve actually considered trying to keep track of all my stuff on an iPhone—if I had one—but I couldn’t press flowers and leaves, or tuck feathers in it, and I would probably drop it in the pond or leave it out in the garden—so that thought flitted out of my mind as quickly as it went in.

Whatever form your garden journal takes really isn’t important; what matters is that you get into the habit of using it.  And before long, one will become such an indispensible part of your life that you’ll wonder how you ever knew what you were doing with anything in your garden without it.

 

 

“Always carry a notebook. And I mean always. The short-term memory only retains information for three minutes; unless it is committed to paper you can lose an idea for ever.”
― Will Self

 Learn to be an observer in all seasons. Every single day, your garden has something new and wonderful to show you.

 

My green thumb came only as a result of the mistakes I made while learning to see things from the plant's point of view.
- H. Fred Ale

 

 

Bald and Beautiful

The first time I saw a bald eagle up close in the wild was at Roaring River State Park, while we were trout fishing. It was so awesome that I nearly cried, then laughed so hard I almost dropped my fishing rod when I realized what going on. The eagle was flying low, maybe 50' away and below treetop level as it chased a flock of crows up the river, flew back the way it had come; circled and made a second pass to be sure those miscreants were staying gone before coming back down-river to perch in the top of a nearby tree where it could keep an eye on its territory and those pestiferous
mischief makers. It was a thrilling sight that is printed on my memory for as long as I live, and a tale I retell at every opportunity to whomever will listen.

This year we went to Stella, Missouri for the first time to see the bald eagles where they have come in for the winter. Stella is at an intersection of four watersheds of Indian and Shoal creeks, and Big Sugar and Elk rivers, a place formerly known as The Village of Springs.  Bald eagles congregate here and in nearby areas in Newton and McDonald counties here in southwest Missouri for food and fishing, December through February. Next weekend, January 25, is the annual Missouri Department of Conservation's Eagle Days in Stella, but the weather is forecasted to turn cold again with another "polar vortex", and it was a beautiful day with temperatures in the 60's, so we opted to miss the festivities and just go for the birds. We were not disappointed! As we neared the Stella area, we saw several eagles soaring high, but the first one we encountered in a tree was not close to the wintering area--it was near a turkey farm. According to a local person with whom we spoke at a convenience store where we stopped for refreshments,  if we wanted to see bald eagles, we should go to a turkey farm with a compost pile--eagles are definitely opportunistic feeders!

There were too many eagles to count perched high in the trees and soaring overhead at a location just outside of the little town of Stella--population 161. The word is that in the winter, eagles outnumber the locals. They are reputed to be fairly solitary birds, as Ross Perot said: "Eagles don't flock, you have to find them one at a time."; but giving the lie to that quote, here there would be several to a single tree, and even two or more to a branch. We could hear them occasionally squawking to each other, like gossipy crows; or possibly a "shove over, mate" complaint about the lack of elbow room. Eagles are definitely birds of attitude!

Not for the first time I wished for a better camera. Mine isn't fast enough to catch them in flight, but still, they sat quite patiently in the trees as if waiting for me to finish taking their pictures.

We had heard that they were also at our favorite trout fishing area at Roaring River, about half an hour further south, so off we went again. On this mild mid-winter day, several avid fishermen were
fly fishing in the river where it flows through the park. You can't keep anything you catch inside
the park at this time of the year, but lots of folks like to catch-and-release. There is a hatchery here, with huge open tanks of rainbow trout in all sizes that will be released into the river during fishing season on a daily basis. For now they are just growing and getting bigger while waiting for opening day on March 1.

And yes, there were eagles. Mostly hanging around the hatchery area.....wonder what they were waiting for?

This magnificent bird posed for us for about ten minutes before it finally flew away, watching us as intently as we were watching it.. We speculated that it might be one of the resident population rather than a winter visitor. It seemed to be keeping an eye on the hatchery tanks also.

 

 

 

 

It was a most wonderful day.

"I am the eagle, I live in high country, in rocky cathedrals that reach to the sky."  --John Denver

"May the wind under your wings bear you where the sun sails and the moon walks." --Gandolf the Grey, "The Hobbit"--J.R.R. Tolkien

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Making scents of the garden in winter

Even though the sun is closer to the earth in winter than it is in summer, it seems wan and far away, due to the tilt of Earth's axis making the sun's rays hit our planet at an acute angle. The garden seems bleak and tired, and the one thing that is unexpected in the midst of winter is a heady perfume; but walking down through the woods a most tantalizing scent wafts under my nose. It grabs me by my senses, swirls around my head and beckons me with intoxicating aroma like the Sirens of ancient Greece lured ancient seafarers with their song.

                      

It isn't going to be so dramatic as to lure me to my death on the rocks, however, as the Sirens did the sailors; unless I trip on the stone edging of the path getting to the Viburnum x bodnantense "Pink Dawn" that is the source of that wonderful smell so I can bury my nose in their blossoms. They are marginally hardy in our zone 7 but this one has survived here for four years. It's one of our zone-pushing successes: so far. Flowering with rose-pink clusters on bare branches, it can be a magical, spectacular sight on a winter's day. Early honey bees out scouting nectar on warm late winter days love it. With sufficient rain, blooms may start in November, continuing through March. If you are lucky enough to find one to buy at a nursery, plant it near where you frequently walk, so you can enjoy it close up. Viburnum Pink Dawn makes an upright shrub to ten feet tall that arches gracefully as it gets older. In fall the leaves turn a burnished bronze. It likes some sun, and though it grows well under an oak in this garden, too much shade will cause it to lean outwards to reach the light.
 

 






















But that isn't all. Further on along the woods path, I get another tug on my nose, and I see our native hamamalis (witch hazel) has burst out with shaggy, spidery yellow, delicately spice-scented flowers. This small tree is one fondly remembered from the woods where I grew up back in Michigan, with hard little nut-like seed capsules that burst open explosively in autumn; sending shiny black seeds some 30' feet from the parent tree. Hamamelis is a medicinal plant; the source for soothing witch hazel lotion. In addition to our native variety, there are several cultivars; the most common one found in nurseries is hamamelis x intermedia "Arnold's Promise" which has larger large yellow flowers in midwinter than the native. Other types have yellow and reddish orange flowers, blooming variously from late autumn through early spring. Most make an upright shrub or small tree to about 12’ tall with brilliant yellow leaves in the fall. Full to part sun and plenty of moisture bring out the best in them, though they will tolerate the drought in our Ozark summers.

 

 

Witch hazel flowers

 

 

Hamamelis is the source of soothing witch hazel lotion. Its witchy name probably comes from the Anglo-Saxon wych, meaning to bend, referring to the use of its forked limbs as divining rods, when the tip would bend as it located water. Early settlers Native Americans using hazel branches to find underground streams, and from there the practice of dowsiing became widespread and was exported back to Europe.

Up close to the house there is another winter bloomer: jasmine nudiflorum. I can catch the sweet smell of it standing on the deck fifteen feet away from where it grows on the arch over the herb
garden gate. It resembles forsythia, but its yellow flowers are highly scented and appear in January.The long vining canes have to be tied to a fence or trellis to keep it off the ground, otherwise wherever it touches soil it will put down roots and sprout up into another plant, making a thicket of itself in a few years; much like forsythia also does if left to its own devices. Winter jasmine loves the sun and refuses to bloom at all in shade. Despite being listed as zone 8, it has grown vigorously here for 20 years; but a deep freeze in January after the flowers have begun to open will turn them brown. Most years we get lucky and just when we're longing to see flowers, there they are; their bright yellow glow warming our souls if not our bodies, making the January sun seem a just a bit less pale.



The days are short
The sun a spark
Hung thin between
The dark and dark.
~John Updike, "January," A Child’s Calendar, 1965

 

 

Nuts!

 This has been a bumper year for a lot of things; berries, acorns, walnuts, hickory nuts—and squirrels. The little stinkers are everywhere, chasing each other, playing tag up and down the trees, chattering with tails flickering, scolding, sitting on the tree above the deck showering black walnut bits on any hapless person who happens to be passing underneath, burying acorns in the flower pots, digging up the bulbs I just planted, but still charming even the most ardent squirrel-hater with their antics. The squirrel population rises and falls with available food, and this year there has been plenty of that, so if there seem to be more squirrels than ever, there are.

Our bird feeders are full of sunflower seed, at least temporarily. Five minutes after they were filled, nuthatches and chickadees were flitting in and out, and—squirrels. They were hanging upside down by their toes from the hangers, jumping from tree to feeder, setting it swinging wildly so birdseed would fall out and they could eat it from the ground at their leisure.

 

 

I have heard rumors of bird feeders that are squirrel proof, and I don’t believe it. If there is a will, there is a squirrel way to defeat every attempt to keep them out. A “squirrel-proof” feeder is just a challenge, a Rubik’s Cube for rodents, and they will solve it. I have tried different types, and after I watched them make a few failed attempts, have seen them sit in a tree, thinking, and sure enough, in another try or two, they have figured it out and are into the sunflower seeds again. They even work in tandem, using teamwork to get at that seedy treasure trove. Sometimes I think they really don’t care about the seed, they just like to prove they can get it!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So I don’t even try to fight it anymore. I know when a battle isn’t worth the effort, and I would be very sad if I never saw a squirrel again. There are better ways for the squirrels and I to coexist. Some cute corn feeders are on the market, and there are patterns for home made ones involving mason jars or PVC pipes that present a puzzle for them, and we know they love a puzzle. There is even one that spins, and flips them off, but I think they actually enjoy the ride.

 

 

Feeding the birds safflower seeds, which squirrels reputedly don’t like, might be a choice, but not all birds like them either and they are expensive. They don’t much bother with thistle seed, and can’t get it out of the feeders very well, so that is an option. Finches, chickadees, and nuthatches like it.  We feed with black oil sunflower seed in the feeders exclusively. Almost all birds like that, except the sparrows. Some wild bird seed scattered on the ground takes care of them and the doves.

 

This mama needs plenty of food to feed her babies!

 

Dusting birdseed with cayenne pepper might work, as birds aren’t affected by it. I am always meaning to do that but I never remember until the feeders are already filled. Providing an open platform feeder with peanuts and corn might be one way to go, the thought being that they will go for the easy food rather than work for it, and leave the other feeders for the birds that you want to feed, but I rather enjoy the entertainment value of watching them try to outsmart and get the best of the silly humans. Squirrels are really such squirrely fun!