Bird feeding is huge! It’s one of the top 5 outdoor activities and really grew in popularity recently as property owners of all sizes became more in tune with their landscapes during the pandemic.
As my colleague Dave Robson with the University of Illinois indicates, when you try to provide food for songbirds, many other outdoor creatures consider themselves invited to the feast. Following are some suggestions for reducing problems from squirrels, mice, rabbits and other critters.
It’s been a good year for moles. A nice amount of rain keeps soils moist and workable—the perfect environment to enable mole movement as they “swim” through the soil. Many people approach the problem of moles by focusing on grubs—that if the grubs are gone, then moles won’t be in the lawn. Though not accurate,…
Customize your gardening experience. Think about what produce you and your family enjoy and want to eat and what you might want to use to can or freeze for later use. In the spirit of “one person, one vote”, consider asking each person in the household to make a plea for vegetables that they like…
ProHort, short for Professional Horticulture, is research-driven education for individuals in the tree, lawn, landscape maintenance, and garden center industries, as well as anyone who wants to hone her/his skills in the areas of botany, insects, soils, landscape design, plant disease, trees, wildlife damage management, turfgrass, and Integrated Pest Management (IPM). While people participating in…
Recently my friend Mary Anna returned from out of town to find her vegetable garden had been visited and the butternut squash eaten. Teeth marks on the squash remnants indicated that one or more squirrels were the culprits. Butternut squash wouldn’t necessarily be a squirrel’s first choice but as the growing season slows, all animals…
Nothing beats the beauty and movement of our backyard birds, especially during the winter months when our landscapes lack color. One important thing to keep in mind, however, is that the bird seed dropped beneath bird feeders can attract voles. Voles are granivores, meaning grains are their main food source. Since the bird seed in…
Are your trees ready for winter? Last week I talked about the importance of winter watering but I want to touch on woody plant protection. Most of our herbaceous perennials die back to the ground and don’t need protection from small mammals. However, those plants that have a persistent above ground structure, tree and shrubs,…
Na na na na, bat podcast!
They look like mice with short tails, but what problems do voles pose for our landscapes? These guys are granivores, so people that feed birds will naturally have more voles in their yard because bird seed is a whole bunch of grain that falls to the ground as the birds partake. It’s the fallen grain…
If you have a fall to-do list, be sure to add “planting spring-flowering bulbs”. New gardeners are enchanted when they see these harbingers of spring and are sometimes dismayed when they find that the time to plant spring-flowering bulbs is in the fall. Spring-flowering bulbs pack a punch with their color, size range and adaptability. …
