Protect your produce from birds

Everyone likes to attract birds into their garden. They are beautiful to watch, and do a sterling job in eating many of the pests which attack our plants – slugs, snails, flying insects. Feeders and waterers will help to lure birds into your garden, as well as including the plants they are attracted to e.g. Honeysuckle, dogwood, viburnum, hawthorn and sunflowers (see our symbiotic plant section). Evergreen trees are attractive for nest-building.

However, birds don't discriminate between the things we want them to eat and the carefully grown produce we want them to leave alone. Netting is one solution of course, but here are a few other ideas

• When fruit starts to ripen, hang sliced onions in the trees

• Hang empty milk cartons in fruit trees, or strips of cloth. Our friend uses old tights – not very pretty, but effective. Change the position from time to time.

• To keep crows off corn or melon, put up several stakes and string white twine around the bed, criss-crossing it through the centre. The birds will think it is a trap and will avoid it.