Back on The Earthly Gardener in April 2007, I posted the recipe that Husband came up with for hummingbird food. Over the years, our recipe hasn't changed. With the coming of the birds (although not so many for us this year for some reason), I thought I'd bump up the recipe and post it here again.
Boil a quart of water and mix in one cup sugar, stir until dissolved.
Let cool until you can put your finger in it. Pour this into feeders,
hang the feeders in a protected spot away from pets, and stand back! Our
feeders each hold one quart, but we only fill them halfway each time.
We change them twice a week or refill sooner if needed, and it’s
important to keep mold and other gunk like that from growing in the
sugar water. Every week or so in the high hummer summer season, we clean
the feeders using just a few drops of vinegar in a lot of water,
scrubbing with a brush if necessary. Then rinse very well.
We
don’t use red dye in our food; it’s not necessary, and I’d hate to
harm the birds. Most feeders either have red tips on the ends of the
tubes, or red disks at the bottom, and these are sufficient to attract
the birds.
Growing lots of red flowers and vines and things that
have red blooms will also help you attract hummingbirds. And then
there’s the blooming rosemary bush, which they love!
Until next time, go attract some hummers to your garden!
Happy trails!
bobbi c.
Showing posts with label hummingbird plants. Show all posts
Showing posts with label hummingbird plants. Show all posts
Sunday, June 2, 2013
Monday, July 5, 2010
More garden inspiration
Dear friends,
I've been in the middle of a veritable picture taking frenzy here in my little secret garden. More photos, continued from last post!
A young Shumard oak will eventually shade the front windows of the house:
I've almost managed to cover the utility boxes that sit in the front. (Editorial comment: This drives me nuts! Builders brag about underground utilities here. Is this underground??? I think not!)
Second family of barn swallows this year. They are almost ready to leave the nest. There are four of them crammed in there. LOL!
Now, let's walk through the garden gate, into the backyard secret garden! Next to the back door sits some gorgeous pots of coleus. I avoided these plants for years because they do tend to take more water than I like to use, but since this is near the kitchen, we're able to throw the old cat drinking water on it, or water from the kitchen. These plants have rewarded me by blooming now. I love the colors! Next to them sits a pot of crimson salvia, volunteers from last spring.
More patio garden---containers of strawberries, a spineless prickly pear cactus in an old antique iron pot.
More containers...basil, cedar sage, tropical cannas (grown in pots so they don't take over). I often use the birdbath as a holding spot for new plants I need to get into the ground. Here I have more salvias and some Turkscap, a native beloved by hummingbirds.
Walking across the patio, behind the house, you see the bulk of our backyard garden. We now have four large beds (app. 3x15' each), one shorter bed, and perimeter beds beside the garage (to the right), and along the back fence, along the wall to the back (to the left) and a more natural area along the fence which is shared with the neighbor. Notice the giant sunflowers! They are wild, and the birds were kind enough to deposit the seeds into the beds for me. One of them is getting eaten alive by hundreds of tiny caterpillars, probably from a Painted Lady butterfly. I'm watching that situation closely. The bees LOVE these sunflowers, and so do I!
Here's a blue fiberglass planter filled with a metal obelisk, Gregg's blue mist flowers (butterflies love it!), Asian yard long beans (delicious, and they grow so fast), and an old blue wine bottle stuck down into the middle.
Along the back fence, we find a wild passionflower vine that came up from the neighbor's yard, traveled under my yard and popped up at the back, more Gregg's Blue Mist, a baby pumpkin vine, Maximilian sunflowers (a Texas native), a mountain laurel, salvias mixed with herbs (sweet marjoram) and a pyracantha.
I LOVE it when plants reseed and volunteers pop up. This is a huge bed of cilantro that came back after the spring last year. We had fresh cilantro to eat for months and seeds to dry for coriander for cooking and for replanting in the fall.
Here is an overview of the main beds. These are the easiest raised garden beds in the world! They consist only of rough untreated cedar fence pickets held up with metal tent stakes and galvanized 12" nails from the hardware store. I started out using wooden stakes, but they rotted too fast. These metal ones should last for years.
The beds, looking towards the back fence--you can see the young fruit trees here. You can really see how small this space is. Yet we still have room for much more.
I guess that's all for today. I hope this has helped show what can be done in a very small space. I previously lived on seven acres, but my garden was never this productive there. Even if you don't have this much space (I've lived in many apartments over the last 30 years, so I do know how that is), you can always plop a plant into a pot.
I hope you'll bookmark this blog and come back to visit me in my little garden.
Happy trails,
bobbi c.
I've been in the middle of a veritable picture taking frenzy here in my little secret garden. More photos, continued from last post!
A young Shumard oak will eventually shade the front windows of the house:
I've almost managed to cover the utility boxes that sit in the front. (Editorial comment: This drives me nuts! Builders brag about underground utilities here. Is this underground??? I think not!)
Second family of barn swallows this year. They are almost ready to leave the nest. There are four of them crammed in there. LOL!
Now, let's walk through the garden gate, into the backyard secret garden! Next to the back door sits some gorgeous pots of coleus. I avoided these plants for years because they do tend to take more water than I like to use, but since this is near the kitchen, we're able to throw the old cat drinking water on it, or water from the kitchen. These plants have rewarded me by blooming now. I love the colors! Next to them sits a pot of crimson salvia, volunteers from last spring.
More patio garden---containers of strawberries, a spineless prickly pear cactus in an old antique iron pot.
More containers...basil, cedar sage, tropical cannas (grown in pots so they don't take over). I often use the birdbath as a holding spot for new plants I need to get into the ground. Here I have more salvias and some Turkscap, a native beloved by hummingbirds.
Walking across the patio, behind the house, you see the bulk of our backyard garden. We now have four large beds (app. 3x15' each), one shorter bed, and perimeter beds beside the garage (to the right), and along the back fence, along the wall to the back (to the left) and a more natural area along the fence which is shared with the neighbor. Notice the giant sunflowers! They are wild, and the birds were kind enough to deposit the seeds into the beds for me. One of them is getting eaten alive by hundreds of tiny caterpillars, probably from a Painted Lady butterfly. I'm watching that situation closely. The bees LOVE these sunflowers, and so do I!
Here's a blue fiberglass planter filled with a metal obelisk, Gregg's blue mist flowers (butterflies love it!), Asian yard long beans (delicious, and they grow so fast), and an old blue wine bottle stuck down into the middle.
Along the back fence, we find a wild passionflower vine that came up from the neighbor's yard, traveled under my yard and popped up at the back, more Gregg's Blue Mist, a baby pumpkin vine, Maximilian sunflowers (a Texas native), a mountain laurel, salvias mixed with herbs (sweet marjoram) and a pyracantha.
I LOVE it when plants reseed and volunteers pop up. This is a huge bed of cilantro that came back after the spring last year. We had fresh cilantro to eat for months and seeds to dry for coriander for cooking and for replanting in the fall.
Here is an overview of the main beds. These are the easiest raised garden beds in the world! They consist only of rough untreated cedar fence pickets held up with metal tent stakes and galvanized 12" nails from the hardware store. I started out using wooden stakes, but they rotted too fast. These metal ones should last for years.
The beds, looking towards the back fence--you can see the young fruit trees here. You can really see how small this space is. Yet we still have room for much more.
I guess that's all for today. I hope this has helped show what can be done in a very small space. I previously lived on seven acres, but my garden was never this productive there. Even if you don't have this much space (I've lived in many apartments over the last 30 years, so I do know how that is), you can always plop a plant into a pot.
I hope you'll bookmark this blog and come back to visit me in my little garden.
Happy trails,
bobbi c.
Monday, April 30, 2007
The hummers are here!
The Earthly Gardener by Bobbi A. Chukran
March 23, 2007
Mornin' earthly gardeners!
I’m up early this morning for some reason. It’s still dark so I can’t look out the window to the garden.
I had a thrill yesterday when I was sitting here and heard a distinctive roaring sound go by my window. It was the first hummingbird of the season! That’s always exciting to us here. Like I’ve mentioned before, when we first moved into this house, there were almost no birds that came near the garden. After ten plus years, we’ve attracted numerous new species to the property by adding a water source, plants that birds love, shelter and food. Husband is the official Keeper of the Hummers here, and lovingly boils up a combo water and sugar for them and keep the feeders full and clean. Bacteria grows easily in sugar water, so it’s important to clean out the feeding tubes once a week or so. We don’t like to use the commercial foods out there, because many of them have harmful dyes. The water doesn’t need to be red as long as the feeder has some red on it. Believe me, the birdies will find it!
Thought you might enjoy seeing a photo of a tropical canna that I’m growing in pots here. This is from last year, and just last weekend I divided the bulbs and repotted them into several larger containers. These things multiply fast, and the bright colors also attract hummingbirds.
I also grow a lot of native salvias here, and the hummers love those, too. I have white, but mostly grow the reds and dark pinks. They also go for the rosemary when it blooms, which was a surprise to me. Since discovering that, I’ve planted lots more rosemary, which does well in our Mediterranean-like climate.
Other things that attract the hummingbirds is the red trim on our porch. LOL. Our birds are feisty, and have been known to buzz our heads if we are too late in the morning getting the food out. Although we can’t be for certain without tagging them (and neither of us wants to deal with that) I’m pretty sure that some of the same birds have come back over the last few years, and they bring their friends with them. Last year, we had at least four pair of them that nested here. It’ll be interesting to see how many show up this year.
Happy spring!
bobbi c.
All photos and text copyright ©2005-2007 Bobbi A. Chukran
March 23, 2007
Mornin' earthly gardeners!
I’m up early this morning for some reason. It’s still dark so I can’t look out the window to the garden.
I had a thrill yesterday when I was sitting here and heard a distinctive roaring sound go by my window. It was the first hummingbird of the season! That’s always exciting to us here. Like I’ve mentioned before, when we first moved into this house, there were almost no birds that came near the garden. After ten plus years, we’ve attracted numerous new species to the property by adding a water source, plants that birds love, shelter and food. Husband is the official Keeper of the Hummers here, and lovingly boils up a combo water and sugar for them and keep the feeders full and clean. Bacteria grows easily in sugar water, so it’s important to clean out the feeding tubes once a week or so. We don’t like to use the commercial foods out there, because many of them have harmful dyes. The water doesn’t need to be red as long as the feeder has some red on it. Believe me, the birdies will find it!
Thought you might enjoy seeing a photo of a tropical canna that I’m growing in pots here. This is from last year, and just last weekend I divided the bulbs and repotted them into several larger containers. These things multiply fast, and the bright colors also attract hummingbirds.
I also grow a lot of native salvias here, and the hummers love those, too. I have white, but mostly grow the reds and dark pinks. They also go for the rosemary when it blooms, which was a surprise to me. Since discovering that, I’ve planted lots more rosemary, which does well in our Mediterranean-like climate.
Other things that attract the hummingbirds is the red trim on our porch. LOL. Our birds are feisty, and have been known to buzz our heads if we are too late in the morning getting the food out. Although we can’t be for certain without tagging them (and neither of us wants to deal with that) I’m pretty sure that some of the same birds have come back over the last few years, and they bring their friends with them. Last year, we had at least four pair of them that nested here. It’ll be interesting to see how many show up this year.
Happy spring!
bobbi c.
All photos and text copyright ©2005-2007 Bobbi A. Chukran
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