Now is the time to find the perfect birdhouse for the nesting birds that are visiting your garden. Birds and birders alike are looking for the perfect home to raise their young avian broods. The best birdhouse has an unfinished interior, with holes the correct size for each species. Features include recommended finishes, both inside and outside, hole size, proper materials, drainage, ventilation, and easy maintenance. Find the right birdhouse to allow a larger number of successful broods to be raised throughout the summer. You, your family and friends will enjoy the avian activity throughout the gardening season.

Features A birdhouse made of wood gives better insulation from the hot daytime temperatures and holds heat during the cooler nights. This allows for a more even heat for the young, allowing the parents to use less energy to keep the birdhouse at the optimum temperature for their young birds’ quick growth and development. Many song birds, including chickadees, titmice, wrens, and nuthatches prefer a 1 1/4″ size hole in order to keep larger birds and predators out of their birdhouse.

Other birdhouse features needing attention are ventilation, drainage, and nontoxic materials. Ventilation allows a more even temperature for the nest during the warm days of summer. Drainage holes allow moisture to drain away, thereby reducing the risk of disease. Nontoxic materials are a must for healthy development of your new brood.

Birdhouse Maintenance

When purchasing a quality birdhouse , birders look for easy maintenance boxes that allow for quick clean-out. The top, side, or back can usually be removed or opened on for easy care. This minimizes disease and pest problems by complete removal of the previous nest. Successful nesting boxes may require two or three clean-outs a year. When boxes are provided earlier in the season, birds will begin their nesting as much as two weeks earlier, thereby allowing time to raise an extra brood in the same year.

We recommend birdhouses with an unfinished interior, and a nontoxic exterior finish or no finish at all. The construction materials should be entirely nontoxic with hardwood being the preferred material. Drainage, ventilation, and easy clean-out design are all important features that a quality birdhouse will offer your birds. This ensures a higher fledgling rate so you have many young birds for you and your family and friends to enjoy.

Hurry to get your new birdhouse up soon since they are scouting for their new homes now. These birdhouses that will offer your nesting birds the most success this summer can be found at Trellismart.com along with other unique garden decor and gardening needs for your landscape.

Apples, pears, plums and other top fruits can all be grown successfully on many different types of soil, but the ideal one is probably a slightly acid, fairly deep, well-drained, medium loam. Dessert apples, especially ‘Cox’s Orange Pippin’, require the best positions, soils and drainage. Pears are rather less tolerant of very dry conditions than are apples. Plums and cooking apples can be grown satisfactorily in a wider range of soils and conditions. Heavy soils will give good results, provided drainage is good and the ground is well prepared with the subsoil thoroughly broken up. Gravel and chalk soils are not good, but if they are well trenched and plenty of dung or composted material is incorporated with the subsoil, results may be reasonable. Light, dry soils present a problem, but here again generous applications of organic manures or compost before planting will help considerably.

Frost can have a serious effect on fruit. Cold air, being heavier than warmer air, tends to collect in pockets in low-lying ground, particularly in valleys where there is no outlet for it. Such frost pockets should be avoided if possible. It is very difficult to obtain regular crops in such situations without elaborate precautions. Some cultivars of fruits are less prone to frost damage and these are indicated in the lists of recommended cultivars. In the case of cordons and small trees some protection against late spring frosts can be given with sacking, frost proof mats or hessian supported on a framework, but this must be made very secure so that the blossoms or young fruitlets are not damaged.