Most garden writers seem to work for the home and garden industry, so they offer suggestions filled with ideas for purchasing more stuff. I asked Mr. Gardener about all the riding lawnmowers I see around the neighborhood, small yards with monsters lawnmowers barely making the turns. The machines often become push mowers, as they are pushed back into the garage or onto a pickup for a trip to the repair shop.
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| Happy Mother's Day |
Animals Love Food, Shelter, and Water
We can create better conditions for many creatures with only a little time and money, sometimes for free.
- Clay pots with breaks in them are perfect toad homes, because toads need shelter from the sun.
- Upside down pots, with holes in their roofs (former drainage holes) are good spider homes.
- Logs are ideal for feeding the creatures of rot, which attract birds. Toads love them too.
- A solar light on the ground will attract bugs, a fly in meal for toads. which are real bug zappers.
- Shallow dishes collect water, which animals need for drinking and bathing. Toads use them to hydrate.
- Shallow containers under a soaker hose will fill and wash themselves most of the time.
- Increased watering stations will multiply the bird population bathing and drinking.
- Food does not simply mean bird food from the store, but especially the seeds of plants and wildflowers, critters hiding in the mulch, and larvae in trees and bushes.
- Suet from a butcher is many times cheaper than suet in little wafers at the bird food section.
- Variety in plants can be created with pass-alongs, easy to raise plants from friends. Their seeds and fruits appeal to many.
- Some plants, like wild strawberries--will produce flowers for bees and fruit for birds and humans--all summer long. Wild strawberries transplant easily.
- Letting an area grow with long grass means having another habitat in the yard, which will change the make-up of the creature convention. The same is true of food.
