After spending way too much money replacing cheap bird feeders that either fall apart or get destroyed by those ninja squirrels, I'm finally ready to invest in something that'll actually last. I live in an area with lots of cardinals, chickadees, and finches, but also an army of determined squirrels that have defeated every "squirrel-proof" feeder I've bought from big box stores.

I was inside, taking this picture through a closed screened window. Instead of obscuring it kind of adds a little pizazz to the pic, IMHO.

This mantis was just walking along very slowly. It’s 59F outside.

Long story short(I hope this is the right place, please tell me if it’s not), I enjoy seeing wild animals or even insects just “appear” naturally in my backyard and I was wondering if there’s anything I could plant that’s native to my area(Middle Tennessee) that could maybe a) help feed deer on their journey to wherever they go b) harbor a variety of insects that just help out with the environment in general

The only thing is: I don’t want to attract any deer mice. So I was also wondering if there’s anything I could plant as well to deter their presence near my home. If any other info is required please let me know or if this is a stupid question.

Weekly weekend chat over the virtual garden fence; talk about what's happening in your garden, and ask quick questions that may not require their own thread.

Weekly weekend chat over the virtual garden fence; talk about what's happening in your garden, and ask quick questions that may not require their own thread.

Happy holiday season everyone! Hope you all have a good time.

If you want to share your grub with the birds, here is what you can and shouldn't share with them.

RSPB - what do birds eat at Christmas? - this includes a list of food you can share, such as; roast potatoes, pastry, cheese....

Be careful of the type of fats you share:

"Fat from cuts of meat (as long as it comes from only unsalted varieties) can be put out in large pieces, from which birds such as tits can remove morsels. Make sure that these are well anchored to prevent large birds flying away with the whole piece. Please remember cooked turkey fat from roasting tins is NOT suitable for birds*.*"

And

"Don’t put out salty foods. Birds can’t digest salt and it will damage their nervous systems."

RSPB notes on nature - grease is the word, but not for the birds!

Suet and lard used in bird cakes, suet balls etc is good! It's fat that stays too soft that could be an issue.

Round up of what human food you can and shouldn't feed birds on my blog

Weekly weekend chat over the virtual garden fence; talk about what's happening in your garden, and ask quick questions that may not require their own thread.

We created a wildlife sanctuary in our ditch. Our state recognizes it and sends a certificate to you. They want people to leave the ditches and allow native plants grow.

Our mayor wanted our ditch cut down the certificate prevented him from able to do it.

We're also going to let our side yard go wild. Every summer 2 deer sleep in the corner of our yard.

The holiday season is upon us, lets see if we can help each other out with some choice gift ideas to spread some cheer, and help some wildlife!

• Which tools wouldn't you be without?
• Which wildlife boxes or feeders have worked for you?
• Maybe you have some seed mix recommendations for your area?
• Perhaps you can rec some garden cameras for watching wildlife?
• Or have you ideas of things someone could make as a gift for a wildlife gardener?

I want my parents to begin to rewild their yard next year. They have 7 acres of beautiful property in the country and are discussing selling because they don’t like the yard maintenance. It causes a lot of problems week to week in their house in the summer as my dad treats cutting the grass like he’s the allies fighting the axis.

The question is, how do you kill 7 acres of non native grass in the most efficient way possible?

My mom keeps bees so herbicides are out of the question. A lot of the other proposed methods involve cardboard and mulch which is not viable at that scale. I know you can kill grass with plastic sheets but that seems like it would also take a long time since the largest black sheets you can buy are about 8x100 feet and take 6 weeks to kill. This would require lots and lots of plastic or lots and lots of time, and the grass would begin to retake the dead areas if you were to use a few sheets and move them around.

Do we even need to kill the non native grass? Can we just toss down native wildflower seeds or would the existing grass out compete them? Any suggestions are welcome!

Edit: Seems killing the existing lawn without herbicides would be a massive undertaking, it is semi wooded with small hills that would make tilling with a tractor difficult.

Are there any reasons not to just let what’s there grow? They live in the countryside in rural Kentucky amongst farm land if that helps.

Weekly weekend chat over the virtual garden fence; talk about what's happening in your garden, and ask quick questions that may not require their own thread.

I'm fencing our vegitable garden to keep out the wild pigs, and discourage roe deer, but any hedgehogs are always welcome.

I've read 13cm for hedgehog holes in fences, but does this mean 13cm wide and 13cm tall? Any idea if they'd happily squeeze through smaller like 10cm?

There is inexpensive farm fencing material with a choice between 10cm, 15cm, and 20cm spacing between the wires. There migfht be weaned pigs who could fit through that 20cm spacing, but even that'd keep out the real damage, but still I'd go as small as the hedgehogs accept.

In the northern hemisphere...

Bird counts start in November and some run into April.

Here are the bird counts I know of:

International

US

Canada

UK

Germany

France

Belgium

Netherlands

Please join in and help count some birds :D

Other projects

I'm bound to be missing some, please let me know!

Also, about any in the southern hemisphere, and I can add them to the wiki and post at an appropriate time about them.

Feel free to pop back here and comment with your results :D

Weekly weekend chat over the virtual garden fence; talk about what's happening in your garden, and ask quick questions that may not require their own thread.

I have about 1/4 acre and the majority in my backyard is grass. I’m looking to add seeds in next spring so I can get more blooms like the dandelion and clover I already get. Preferably something that stays 6inches or shorter due to the occasional mowing, but I try to let it grow out more than the average person.

Weekly weekend chat over the virtual garden fence; talk about what's happening in your garden, and ask quick questions that may not require their own thread.

Hi everyone! :)

'Tis the season for all things spooky and misunderstood, so we'd like to encourage you to talk about maligned garden critters - any garden wildlife that is misunderstood, disliked, feared, etc... for example bats, or wasps.

We'd love you to share your knowledge of these creatures, and hopefully share understanding and enable people to better tolerate, live with, and even love these critters.

So please:

• Comment here if you'd like more information about any critters you dislike, and perhaps someone can help you think differently about them.
• Comment to share you knowledge of what makes these critters awesome.
• Comment to share subreddits about maligned critters and I'll add them to the post.
• Share this, where you feel it will be welcome, to invite others to join in!

I do understand that sometimes wildlife can be hard to live with, but in many cases understanding and acceptance can go a long way.

Absolutely NO HATE! Love, science, and understanding please. Thank you.

Suggested subs to learn more:

r/batty | r/insects | r/whatsthisbug | r/spiderbro | r/WASPs | r/moths | r/batfacts | r/spiders | r/herpetology | r/snakes | r/whatsthissnake | r/awwnverts

Phobias:

Reddit is not the place to get advice on treating phobias, if you have a phobia you'd like to face please seek professional help.

I wanted to include links where you can find help. I focused on where most of our members are, but please suggest sites for elsewhere if you know of them.

UK: MIND | US: ?can someone suggest a good link? | Canada: CMHA

That said, some subs might be helpful too r/askpsychology | r/askscience | r/Phobia

A note on pumpkins

If you celebrate with pumpkins this time of year, please make sure it's safe for your local fauna first, before leaving any out for them. Pumpkin isn't good for hedgehogs for example, so the advice in the UK is to pop the pumpkins on a bird table or up a tree.

So five years ago I divorced my ex, he loved the front lawn..... three years ago I decided I'd had it with grass, I hate cutting the lawn, its a pain and pointless....

I'm in the UK and own my own house so the complaints I have had about it looking a mess just makes me want to be more obnoxious... And it's 50/50 between the complaints and compliments.....

So I dug the whole lot up, much to my neighbours confusion and my ex annoyance (bonus point) And turned it into a wildflower meadow. First year was amazing loads of bees, and butterflies. Second year I added some bulbs. Again fantastic....this year I'm overrun with docks, now the birds loved them and the bees, butterflies were joined by loads of dragon flies and crickets.... but I kind of want more colour so I'm redigging the whole lot, gives me an excuse to add more bulbs for spring colour and I'm looking for some additional ideas.

I'm going to mix in some sunflowers with the wild flower mix, but this is a good size garden of about 25 m square. The more obnoxious the better I'm cool with scraggy and unkempt, Ideas for perennial would be great. Bear in mind I'm a certified idiot and an asshole who is not above being petty.

I created these decaying log habit under two rows of grapevines in two gardens far back of yard. Fenced yard. basically an old decaying log pile with tons of pill bugs, I moved under the grape vines to help mulch leaves in the garden with a big bug population. there's obviously mice now that the weather is get cold. we put an acre yard worth of tree leaves on the gardens over winter.

Kind of a tough, waste of a question...

but where would I be at if I used a ho and pulled all the logs out and distributed them individually in the garden individually over winter, vs leaving them piled in a row under the grape vines.

Would that distribute pill bugs better around the garden and prevent mice from having good nesting? it would end up lowering the total bug population though, wouldn't it?

my dogs sniff at the dog piles kind of obsessively for the mice and if I pulled the piles apart during winter and reinstalled them in spring it would keep mice down.

I'll probably just leave it. just curious on one of those more nuanced garden moves.