Nature's helpers

As with all organic food growing it is important to take advantage of nature's help along the way.  It will happily do lots of work for you if you let it.  This post is about the birds that help us in our garden and how our little robins in particular help to keep those annoying little creatures that live under the fruit pots in check.

Of course the fellas that live under the pots are only annoying if there are too many of them.  The odd wood louse or slug isn't the end of the world and they do plenty of useful work themselves.  They breakdown garden debris into food for plants and so they need to be allowed some space too.  If you allow nature to help keep things in a good balance then everything should work out ok when growing plants. When you think about it...say 200 strawberries grew in our garden this year and 30 were damaged by slugs it wouldn't be so bad.  It seems annoying but think about the amount of food that is thrown out by the food industry all the time.  I think only something like 15% of all the food that is grown gets consumed in the end.  The rest presumably gets rejected at quality control, gets damaged during transport and then goes off in the shops and possibly people's fridges.  So, doing a quick calculation....mmm... if we loose 30 of our strawberries from 200 we'd get about an 85% consumption rate.   Pretty good, and we didn't have to consume all those resources to produce it either. And, the slugs made some food for next years crop and for the beautiful birds that entertain us with their song.  So  our 15% loss in a particular crop is balanced out by gains elsewhere. 

So I have just convinced myself not to be too uptight about loosing a few bits of fruit to slugs etc.  In fact it may be a good idea to plant an of extra strawberry plant, for example, to account for any losses you might have.  But to make sure we don't loose all the fruit I let our little robins give us a helping hand.  We have discovered that we are in fact being trained by the robins that live in our garden.  They appear suddenly when we start doing any work in the garden in case we unearth any scrummy little insects.  They are very brave and come within a few feet of us in order to snap up any free dinners.  And the best bit is that if we move any plant pots then they will quickly jump in and gather up anyone living underneath.  This has the advantage of keeping all those insects at a reasonable population level.  So, I make sure to move a few pots every week and will probably try to do it every day from now on as the insects start to wake up from their winter slow down.  So Mr. and Mrs. Robin have set up quite a nice arrangement for themselves.  I think they must also think they posses magical powers, as every time they come close to us we freeze.  We know that we do this in the hope of not frightening them away but they must think we're strangely scared of them!

Here are some pictures of our robin before, during and after a bath on our greenhouse roof. Providing places for birds to have baths is important so that they will be happy living in the area and continue to keep the insects in check.

This bird bath happened by accident but we have seen how much it is used and there is often a queue of birds waiting to use it, seriously. Due to the fact that it is on a slope there is a deep end for big birds and a shallow end for little birds.  If a little bird is feeling brave it can manage to sneak a bath at the same time as a blackbird. Yesterday I got splashed as I walked by the greenhouse and looked around to see a brave little robin having his evening bath.

And here is the little guy looking like no robin I've ever seen before!  He's about 3 times his normal width.  He obviously went for the blow dry as well :)

I think that growing one's own food can be about so much more than simply receiving some tasty prizes at  the end of the season.  It is about becoming part of nature rather than remaining a sideline observer.  As the birds and insects, the wind, the sun and the rain all join in our task of growing fruit we can gain a lot of comfort.  There is something about nature that tries to keep drawing us in and that's probably because it's the right place to be.  It feels good to be out in the natural environement.  It feels better to be part of it.

Another blow dryer :)

 

Comments

[Susan Small]

I too have a little robin who appears every time I move soil. I will now be moving my pots too so he will get extra rations. :)

I am really enjoying your blog and hope you will continue it at some point. It is a refreshing change to read one where the writer is as involved with the nature aspect of growing as you are.