If I were to order a few 4' American hazelnuts over the winter to plant in my garden in the spring, how do I store them in the meantime? Can I safely keep them indoors? My reason for ordering them early is to safeguard against them being sold out later.

Hello! I'm looking for some advice/ideas for how to manage gravel areas for wildlife without just leaving them to grow over.

I moved here couple of years ago, and started trying to make the garden better for wildlife. All the front garden, and some pathways round the back are gravel. Some parts have a membrane under, some don't.

Though I've been planting wildflowers and shrubs in the beds and going through the slow process of fighting the lawn into being a meadow, I was planning to leave these gravel areas bare for access.

Trouble is, this garden gets a lot of sun and keeping the weeds down is becoming an issue. I am away a lot of the year for work so even if I wanted to spend that much of my free time pulling weeds I couldn't. Judging by the amount of weedkiller left in the shed when we moved in, I think the last owners only kept them down my spraying. Some areas have a membrane beneath, some don't, it doesn't seem to make a difference.

So what's best to do here to create something that will manage itself (as far as can be expected)? My plan so far is to accept it will never look tidy and slowly cover it in mat-forming or low cover. I'm in the UK so so far I'm thinking thyme, armera maritima, sulphur clover, Ajuga reptans and maybe chamomile. Does anyone have any other/better ideas?

Picture attached (bare and miserable looking because December).

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.

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.