Great Garden Gadgets : Make-It-Yourself Gizmos and Projects

Bird-Feeding Gadgets Want to attract more birds to your yard? Try to create prime habitat in your backyard by making a plastic netting suet bag, gourd birdhouse, or an instant birdbath. Tired of starlings taking over your purple martin house? Duct tape may be the answer to your problem. Read on to learn how a few simple gadgets can help bring the right birds to your yard. Net Bags for Suet and Supplies Use plastic netting bags from onions or citrus fruit to offer suet to birds in winter, suggests Linda Harris of Fulton, Kentucky. Here's how she does it: Place suet in the bag and tie a knot at the top. Cut the hook section off a wire clothes hanger, and bend it open into a single straight length of wire. Run the wire through the bag just under the knot. Bend the wire into a U-shape, twist the ends together, and then hang the bag on a tree branch near your house windows so you can watch birds feed. In early spring, fill another bag with pet hair, longish human hair, 6-inch lengths of string, straw, or small clippings of plant material from your garden, and hang it up in the same way. Birds will help themselves to these nest-building materials and will thank you by nesting nearby. Duct Tape Says "No Vacancy" Purple martins are wonderful residents of any backyard, both for their beauty and song as well as for their assistance in insect control. But these flying bug catchers face stiff competition from house sparrows, which often usurp their apartment houses before the martins return from migration. Birdhouse suppliers market various guards to close off apartment entrances, but martin fancier Connie Wilson of Mt. Vernon, Indiana, found a simpler solution to keep out the unwanteds. "I just stick a piece of duct tape over the holes until I see the first martin scout arrive. Then I remove the tape so the martins can move in." Instant Birdbath Every garden should have a birdbath, but store-bought birdbaths can cost a pretty penny. Rather than buying a birdbath, Janet Carter, outreach coordinator at the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society's Philadelphia Green, recommends that gardeners take a round drainage tray for a potted plant (10 to 12 inches in diameter is best) and place it onto the top of a sturdy tomato cage (a four-legged cage is stronger than a three-legged one). The birdbath will hold about 2 inches of water without wobbling and you can easily move it around the garden, so you can find the places the birds like best. Smaller, shorter, and shallower models work great in butterfly and rock gardens. A drainage tray filled with 2 inches of water and placed on top of a tapered three- or four-legged tomato cage will provide the birds that frequent your garden with a source of water. H2O for Beneficials The beneficial insects in your garden need water just as much as birds, but birdbaths don't serve the needs of ants, spiders, and beetles. Jeff Ball, a garden writer from West Chester, Pennsylvania, came up with a way to keep insects hydrated, too. He created a bug watering can. "The bug watering can is nothing more than an empty tuna fish or cat food can stuffed with a plastic pot scrubber (netting bunched up into a ball)," says Ball. "The plastic scrubber lets the insects get down to the water without worrying about falling in. I have at least six of these bug watering cans situated in out-of-the-way places around my garden. The rain will usually keep them filled, but when the drought comes, the bug cans get filled with water right along with the birdbath." Cat Litter Is for the Birds Heavy bags of birdseed are economical to buy, but hard to handle. And, once they're opened, mice or squirrels can make a feast on birdseed you store in a shed or garage. Today, some cat litter brands are available in handy plastic buckets with lids. So if you have a cat or two, switch to the economy-size bucket of litter. Once the litter pail is empty, rinse it out, dry it thoroughly, and use it as a secure storage bucket for birdseed. Says Karen Soltys of Sellersville, Pennsylvania, "Toss in a scoop, and you can carry the bucket of seed to any of your feeders and scoop out what you need. It's much easier than lugging a 20-£d bag of sunflower seed and hoisting it up to the feeder. The snap-on lid helps keep the seed fresh, too."

Compost-Making Equipment Every great garden starts with good soil. One of the ways to create good soil is by amending your beds with lots of compost. But there's no reason to shed sweat and tears while producing that black gold. Read on to find out what gadgets your fellow gardeners use to make composting a snap. Solve the Riddle Problem Compost sieves, sometimes called riddles, tend to be small and expensive, but you can easily build one of your own that fits on top of your wheelbarrow--for just a few dollars. This sieve and wheelbarrow setup is perfect for resting next to the compost pile where you can scoop compost on top and work it through the screen with a trowel or spade. The resulting fine- textured compost is ideal for adding to indoor plants, starting seedlings, and doing other container gardening. To make the sieve, nail four pieces of lumber, such as 1 x 2s, into a large square or rectangle big enough to rest across the wheelbarrow with a few inches to spare. Then use snips to cut a piece of galvanized hardware cloth to fit the wood frame. Attach the hardware cloth to the bottom of the frame with galvanized brads. Make your own fine-textured compost with an inexpensive, build-it-yourself sieve. Easy Compost Aerator Tired of spending hours turning your compost pile to keep it well aerated? Kelly Winterton of Mountain Green, Utah, discovered the perfect compost tool right in his garden shed: a bulb-planting auger designed to be used with a cordless drill. Winterton just hooks up the auger, turns on the drill, and pushes the business end through the compost pile. The auger easily makes channels for air to enter the pile. As a bonus, the auger mixes and chops the materials as it works, speeding up the composting process. Shimmying Compost Sieve Martha Black and her husband, Les, of Anchorage, Alaska, came up with a vibrating compost sieve to make quick work of screening the compost. Les made the compost sieve out of 1/2-inch rabbit mesh and four 2 x 2s. "I placed the sieve across the top of my wheelbarrow and shoveled on the compost," says Martha, "but getting the compost to go through the screen was quite a job. So Les found an old handheld vi/brating sander and used some wire to attach the sander to the rabbit mesh. We turned on the sander, started shoveling, and the compost went through quickly and easily." (Note: For safety's sake, make sure you plug the sander into a grounded GFCI outlet.) A handheld vibrating sander adds just enough shake, rattle, and roll to get compost through a sieve easily. Composting Tomato Cages Tomatoes and peppers love rich soil. Help them thrive by providing them with their own supply of compost! Make a cylinder from a 6-foot length of wire fencing (chicken wire or varying grades of turkey wire are fine; just be sure it can stand without support). You can cut 5-foot-wide fencing in half to make a pair of 2 1/2-foot-high cages--this height is visually unobtrusive but is still high enough to stake tomatoes. Cut the vertical wires in an alternating pattern to provide tinelike feet that will stick into the dirt. Clamp the cages closed with small pieces of wire coat hanger or extra pieces of fencing. Place the cage in a garden bed and use it to hold garden wastes, especially weeds. As plant scraps break down, they'll directly feed plants growing near them, so plant tomatoes, peppers, or vine crops around the outside of the cylinder, and train them to grow up the sides of the fencing. At the end of the season, pull up the wire cylinder, shake off the dead vines, and move it to another section of the garden. Begin filling it again as you do your fall cleanup. Use wire fencing and coat-hanger wire loops to make a composting cage for your tomatoes and peppers. They'll thrive on the rich soil that the compost provides.