Scare Birds Away From Seedlings With A Simple Dollar Tree Garden Hack

While you may normally be in the habit of trying to attract birds to your garden, one place you don't want to see these feathery friends is landing in fresh plantings. Because birds often see them as a tasty snack, it's imperative to cover seedlings. Bird netting, readymade plant covers, and a genius window screen hack are all solid options to keep young plants safe, but another solution is to simply scare the birds away.

Most species are easily spooked by shiny reflections and noises given off by metallic objects and you can use this to your advantage. YouTuber Zen Garden Oasis did so successfully with a simple Dollar Tree hack that required just two items: Crafter's Square metal icons ($1.25 for a three-pack) and plant support stakes. Honing in on vulnerable seedlings and transplants, drive stakes into the ground and hang one icon from each — that's it. Not only will sunlight shimmer off the metal, but as Zen Garden Oasis noted, "In a light breeze, this is constantly moving around and it's even hitting this metal stake, which makes just a little bit of noise." Those two aspects combined will ensure birds are spooked and stay at bay. Building off of this knowledge, you can also implement several other simple tricks to allow seedlings to flourish.

Keeping with the same premise as hanging metal icons on plant support stakes, there are several other simple bird detractors you can DIY in your garden. If you have an old CD collection gathering dust, put it to good use by hanging the shiny disks on plant support stakes or string them around the garden. Alternatively, drive shiny toy pinwheels into the ground next to your seedlings, hang aluminum foil and metallic party streamers from trees, or stick reflective tape around boxed plants. If you're dealing with woodpeckers in particular, place aluminum pie plates on trees they frequently visit. You can also use the pie plates in another way: tie them close together on a string (so close that they hit each other in the wind) and hang them around the most vulnerable plants.

While these options may not be the most aesthetically pleasing, they won't need to stay up forever. As Carol Savonen, a naturalist and writer for the Statesman Journal, notes, once plants begin to grow, they will become more robust and will no longer be as appealing to birds searching for seeds to snack on. What's more, these shiny detractors don't need to cover every inch of your garden. In fact, some of the most popular plants, like tomatoes, carrots, potatoes, and mint, are not attractive to birds and likely won't need much protection at all. Rather, focus your efforts on adding light and sound around peas, lettuce, strawberries, squash, and cabbage.