If you take the time to nurture a garden, you don’t want birds stealing all your harvest, right? This often happens, however, since hungry fowl can’t readily distinguish fruits and veggies growing to nourish your family from what’s theirs for the taking out in the wild. Thus, it’s always good news when you can find a way to inexpensively deter birds from garden thievery using items straight out of your kitchen. Enter the disposable aluminum pie pan.
After every good holiday feast and party throughout the year, foil pie pans often end up in the trash bin. Instead of tossing them, clean them off and save them for garden use. If you never buy food that comes in disposable plates like these, most supermarkets have them available in packages of two or three in the baking aisle for under $5. Post your “wish” for clean foil pie pans on your local Buy Nothing group on Facebook for an even more economical alternative. Chances are your neighbors will be willing to share disposable pie pans perfect for keeping birds away from your garden free of charge.
How pie pans can keep birds from ruining your garden
When hung in a garden, the reflective foil that makes up disposable pie pans flashes brightly, frightening and confusing birds enough to scare them away. To use disposable pie pans this way, punch a hole in them and hang them using string, yarn, or wire in various spots around your garden beds. However, one complaint about this method of discouraging birds is that they get used to seeing the plates over time and start ignoring them. Not to worry, though. You can add a sound element that will provide an additional deterrent.
“I keep birds and animals out of my garden with a simple noise maker that I made out of an aluminum pie plate and a string with a nut tied to it,” Douglas Brown of Canada told Farm Show Magazine. “As the plate flaps around in the wind, the nut constantly bounces against it and makes an echoing noise that’s quite loud.” Remember that using a metal hardware nut with a pie pan can get rather noisy at night, so placing them in areas where you can take them down in the evening and replace them in the morning may be preferable. You, too, can rid your garden of pesky birds with a bit of aluminum pie pan ingenuity.
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