Plant Birdseed To Feed Birds

If you have bird feeders and like to attract goldfinches here's a cheap way to do it. No need to buy special seeds! Just sort out some sunflower seeds from the mixed seed or keep a handful from a bag of sunflower seed. Store over winter in a cool, dry, dark place. Plant them after the ground warms up where they can be seen from you windows.

Some of these will grow to be what everyone expects a sunflower to look like, tall with a single seed bearing head. These will probably be eaten by squirrels. Many of the other seeds, however, will branch out everywhere and produce many small heads. The smaller heads produce smaller seeds that squirrels aren't interested in. The goldfinches love the smaller heads. We had just one of the seeds grow in a bush shape and it produced many, many heads. How many? I stopped counting at 300! We often let some volunteer sunflowers grow in the flower beds where they simply dropped from the feeders.

By Janice from Cleveland, OH