A gardening expert has shared the clever way to use potatoes in your garden to protect your plants. As the weather gets warmer and summer gets closer, gardeners are emerging into their outdoor spaces to plant their favourite flowers so they have a gloriously vibrant and abundant selection of colours come the warmer months of the year. Garden experts have been sharing their advice as we approach a vital time of the year for gardeners.
One of them, Simon Akeroyd, an RHS-trained gardener, author and social media influencer with more than 2.4 million followers, recently shared his top tips with The Independent. As well as tips for growing better, he offered some unusual advice on protecting your garden throughout the spring and summer months, and it’s a strange tip you might not have heard before. Although birds are a welcome addition to many gardeners, they can sometimes destroy seedlings and feed on fruits growing in your garden, so you might want to think about keeping them away while your plants are in the early stages of growing.
He recommended making a feather and potato bird-scarer to keep them away while things are growing. “Basically, you take an old potato, stick feathers in it, then use a skewer to make a hole through the middle of it, get a piece of string and thread it through and tie the potato up, suspending it over your crops,” he told the publication.
“It moves in the wind and scares birds.” Meanwhile, Ceri Thomas, Garden editor at consumer group Which?, revealed how to protect your garden from birds throughout the year.
In the first three months of the year, she says it’s important to protect fruit tree buds. Between April and May, gardeners should cover new seedlings and seedbeds to protect them from bird damage.
“Visual deterrents like flapping, reflective scarers, toy cats, hawk replicas or scarecrows may work for a while, but birds soon become accustomed to them,” she warned.
“Our testing found kites in the shape of birds of prey worked best out of these types of deterrents. If you choose to use visual deterrents, it’s a good idea to buy several so you can swap them in and out to avoid birds becoming used to them.”
However, there are benefits to having birds in your garden, Ceri says. Attracting birds like robins and blue tits with food means they will also feed on insect pests, which gives your plants more protection.
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