Whether you have been gardening for years and have officially claimed your green thumb or have decided to take it up as your latest hobby, getting seedlings to grow past the germination stage can be challenging. If you are starting seeds indoors, you face the difficulty of maintaining the proper environment and ensuring that your young plants receive adequate sunlight. However, because of numerous natural forces against you, it’s even harder to grow seedlings outdoors. Because birds are constantly pulling out seedlings, they are undoubtedly one of the biggest challenges you’ll face when you have young plants growing in your garden.
Fortunately, there is a fool-proof hack for gardeners of all levels of expertise to ensure that no bird is able to reach any new sprouts. Simply cover your seedlings after planting with an old window screen. This will act as a shield for the seedlings to grow strong while staying safe from natural predators like birds. This hack works perfectly for a couple reasons. It blocks birds from swooping down and picking at the vulnerable seedlings in your soil. At the same time, the small holes in the window screen allow sunlight and rainwater to seep through, ensuring that the hack does its job without harming the integrity of your garden or hindering your plants’ growth.
How to complete this window screen hack
First, you will need to gather your materials, which include an old window screen and bricks. If you are covering freshly-planted seeds, you can place the old window screen directly over your garden bed and secure it with a brick on each of the four corners. However, if you are looking to protect seedlings that have already sprouted, start by placing four bricks around your plants, creating a rectangle the same size as the window screen you will be using. Then, place your window screen on top of these bricks and secure it with four more bricks on the corners. This will give the seedlings roughly 2.5 inches to grow while still being protected from birds aerially. And, if you need more room, just add more bricks to your base to elevate the screen.
No bricks? No problem! Pieces of wood and rocks are the perfect substitutes if you do not have any extra bricks lying around, and you can likely find them in your backyard for free. After just a few weeks, your window screen hack will have completed its job, and your plants will be strong enough to stand on their own against natural predators. At this point, you can remove the window screen and bricks or other materials.
