Plants in the News

[CG100]

Over the years, what to hang in gardens/vegetable plots has changed.......

The most ancient of "guaranteed to work" were probably the foil cases/trays used for shop-bought pies and the like. The next idea was probably empty PET bottles, followed by PET bottles with some water in them (not much). The idea of using CDs has been around for ages (remember all those freebie AOL junk mail CDs?).

It is all fantasy. If it works at all, it doesn't for very long.

The other idea was to bury bottles  so that their tops were just proud of the ground - the sound from the wind blowing across the tops would frighten/discourage various things.

I presume that people are pining for the gamekeepers' gibbet? Equally as effective.

[David Pilling]

Many of the fish and chip shops in Blackpool have flying outside the like of:

"Peregrine Pro Hawk Kites Professional bird deterrents that scare Seagulls and Pigeons away from rooftops
and gardens instantly. Kite on pole that takes a less than 5 minutes to install."

Seagulls being the second biggest predator of chips.

[CG100]

Kites I would have thought would work, but................

Maybe 6-8-10 years ago bird-shaped kites that had a very fast and random flight pattern - a very clever, but presumably simple design, as most clever things are - were very popular over crops that are (wood) pigeon magnets. I don't recall seeing one for quite some while, near certainly not since before C19, and perhaps they only persisted for a year, maybe two?

I haven't heard a gas gun for umpteen years either (although I seem to recall mutterings of banning them due to noise nuisance).

If anything is effective and cost-effective, it tends to hang around.