Try this clever sunflower trick to protect sunflowers from birds if the birds are getting to your sunflower seeds before you do!
The dollar store to the rescue again! We’ve grown sunflowers every year since we’ve had a garden, but we honestly don’t usually get a chance to harvest many seeds for ourselves because all the birds we have around our property always swoop in and have a feast as soon as the seeds start to be ready. I really don’t mind, usually. I still get a chance to enjoy how beautiful the sunflowers are and of course it’s so nice to have so many different types of birds to watch and listen to. It would be fun to snack on at least a few of our own sunflowers seeds though! We came up with this quick and easy sunflower trick to protect a few of our sunflowers and to keep a few for ourselves this year and it’s worked like a charm! Here’s how to protect sunflowers from birds!
The Dollar Store Trick to Protect Sunflowers from Birds
The solution to this little problem started the way a lot of easy solutions do: with a quick trip to the dollar store. We grabbed a few of those mesh laundry bags that are usually used for washing delicate items. They ended up being the perfect size for this project and using them is just easy enough that we’ll actually remember to do this every year at the end of summer. 🙂
All we did was watch our sunflowers to see when the seeds started to look like they were developing. Then, we slipped a mesh laundry bag over the flower. That’s it!
These bags work really well for this because they keep the birds out, while still allowing air to circulate. This way, the sunflower seeds can still continue to develop and dry out as usual without being eaten too early!
This is Chris’ depiction of the birds’ reaction to this. Ha.
I love that this is a great reusable solution. If we were to just cut a piece of garden netting and tie it over the flowers, things would probably get pretty messy and we’d end up throwing everything in the trash when we were done with it.
With these mesh bags, we can easily toss them in the wash, fold them neatly, and save them for next year!
How do you protect sunflowers from birds? Or do you just let the birds have them like we’ve done in the past? 🙂
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Courtenay Hartford is the author of creeklinehouse.com, a blog based on her adventures renovating a 120-year-old farmhouse in rural Ontario, Canada. On her blog, Courtenay shares interior design tips based on her own farmhouse and her work as founder and stylist of the interior photography firm Art & Spaces. She also writes about her farmhouse garden, plant-based recipes, family travel, and homekeeping best practices. Courtenay is the author of the book The Cleaning Ninja and has been featured in numerous magazines including Country Sampler Farmhouse Style, Better Homes and Gardens, Parents Magazine, Real Simple, and Our Homes.