If your garden has a regular inflow of exotic birds, by the virtue of your bird feeders and bird baths, besides all the aesthetic blessings and overall good it reflects on your garden.
The one problem that you are going to face anyways is every time you try to grow some new grass in your garden.
While you plant the seeds in the right way, the sprouts barely come out of the seed and you never see the grass indeed growing out.
And this might be solely because of the fact that the birds that tend to come into your garden also tend to feed on your grass seeds, like in my case.
Here's My Story and How I prevented this from happening.
I too faced this problem in my own backyard, which is also quite reasonable if explored.
Firstly, these seeds have several nutritional benefits for most birds, and secondly, birds are well aware of the fact that grass seeds are harmless and hence tend to feed more on them.
Now, we all know how effortful a task it is to plant grass seeds, and I clearly couldn’t lose any more of it to my carelessness and hence knew, this problem has to be solved.
Thus, I conducted detailed research on the same to find out the following pro tips on how to keep my garden grass seeds safe from the birds in here and have listed them below for you, in case you too are suffering from the same.
Methods I Used To Keep Birds From Eating Grass Seeds
A Repellent Net To Your Rescue
While you newly sow the grass seeds into the soil you can layer it up with an anti-bird net to prevent the seeds from being pecked by the birds.
It’s a simple process because you simply have to place these repellent nets over the grassland during the germination process that won’t allow the beaks of the birds through it and hence no threat is involved.
You can also dig the seeds ⅛ of an inch deeper into the soil to avoid the threat altogether. Observe carefully on a regular basis to watch when the seeds germinate.
As soon as they do, do not forget to remove the repellent net to encourage better growth of the grass.
These nets are mostly lightweight and made out of polyurethane, which does not, however, create the most ideal conditions for your grass, for its bad conduction of electricity, no room for penetration, and tendency to mold.
Hence, it’s necessary that you remove them on time to actually let your grass seeds survive.
Using Fake Owls And Hawks Is An Interesting Process
All birds are afraid of their predators and hence we can use this exact idea to keep the birds trying to feed on our grass seeds in check.
While we cannot actually bring their predator birds into our garden, we can however use some decoys to scare the birds away.
The one thing that we need to take care of is to make sure that we are making it look real enough, with some added sound effects, mechanical movements, and also changeable locations.
Soon the birds will start to find a threat in your garden and won’t bother to come in here again.
Straw Can Defend Your Seeds Too
Straws are lightweight and environment-friendly layers to use on your seeds.
They will allow all the environmental requirements to penetrate through them to reach the seeds for fruitful germination, yet hide your seeds from external threats, like birds.
However, if your garden faces a windy direction, straws are most likely to get blown away easily and thus you can dig the seeds into the ground to about the depth of ⅛ of an inch to prevent them from getting blown away with the straw and also hide it from the birds.
A Decoy Feeder Is Always Attractive
Well, birds literally spend most of their lifetime in the air, and hence, having to descend on land to have their food is not the most favorable option for them.
Rather, it might be the lack of food above the ground that actually makes them fly all the way down to find their food.
Thus, if you can effectively solve this problem and let the birds have an array of edible seeds closer to their natural habitat, why would they bother putting extra effort, right? And that is what decoy feeders are for.
Place some decoy feeders in the main points where they can effectively attract birds, but remember to keep them fairly away from the place where you have sown your grass seeds.
If they get their food right away, they won’t bother to put in that extra flight.
Burlap Sheets Are Good Options
Burlap sheets are some efficient solutions to the problem, with their added benefits.
These generously allow the water to seep through the layer and also accommodate room for heat and light to penetrate through and reach the soil.
These features of burlap make it extremely favorable for grass seeds because of the allowance of proper conditions, heat, light, and water to germinate in a natural environment.
These are also quite resistant to windy weather and hence can protect the seeds from blowing as well, which is definitely a win-win situation for you.
Mulch Can Be A Good Weapon
Mulch is definitely a great solution to most of your garden problems, literally. These substances not only help to add up and maintain the right proportions of moisture in the soil.
But also do not let any unwanted plants germinate in your garden area, creating an enriching yet obstructing layer between the soil and the environment.
And this exact layer of obstruction also helps to prevent birds from pecking on your sown grass seeds because they apparently can’t penetrate through the layer.
Hence, while you law down the mulch, make sure it’s made of components that do not allow the birds to peck through it and you will have the most organic solution to your problem.
A Noise Deterrent Will Work Too
Birds are excellent hearers, with the capability of being able to hear frequencies that are even lower than the minimum human range, termed Ultrasonic audible ranges.
And this exact trait of birds can help us get rid of their habit of eating up the grass seeds.
And the best part is how you do not particularly need to use only one sound because there is a wide variety of high pitch sounds that are absolutely unpleasant for birds in low pitch.
And the added advantage is these sounds are also inaudible to human ears and hence, you or your family will not at all be bothered by the nuisance, and yet you will be driving the birds away effortlessly.
Always Having hands-on Extra Seeds and Bird Repellent Seeds
Well, no matter how hard you may try, it’s almost next to impossible that you will be able to protect all the seeds sown from the birds around or on a windy day because some birds are always going to make it through most of your obstructions and wind might simply blow your seeds off.
Hence, the strategy is to always have some extra seeds with yourself.
Preferably, you can have bird repellent grass seeds too that are coated with substances that are unpleasant to birds, to make sure that the birds coming through all your resistance do not find your grass seeds attractive.
A Reflective Scare Tape
We already are quite familiar with the fact that birds hate extra light flashes, which is however not an unusual trait.
This anti-extreme brightness attitude of birds is what we put to use for our advantage, through the instruments like reflective tapes.
You can use these tapes around the places where mainly the grass seeds are planted, to simply keep them away from that area, but not drive them absolutely out of your garden.
You can either stick these on the walls or maybe hang them in the same place to cover a greater area.
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