January 2004

Turn your Christmas tree into a giant birdfeeder. Stake the tree securely. Collect large pinecones and place peanut butter between the scales. Roll the cones in birdseed. Attach the cones to branches with wire.

Make a bird feeding area on a backyard tree. Take a spatula and spread a patch of bark with peanut butter. Sprinkle birdseed on the peanut butter.

Follow these cold weather bird-feeding tips to attract birds to your yard.

• Place birdfeeders where you can see the birds.
• Mount birdfeeders on poles or wires at least five to six feet above the ground.
• Cover for the birds such as trees and shrubs should be within five feet of the feeder.
• Provide birds with high-energy suet feeders. Suet feeders can be made from beef suet or lard mixed with birdseed, oatmeal, and cornmeal. For a variety of easy to make suet recipes call 773-233-0476.
• Provide a water source for birds in the winter. Keep the water from freezing by using a water heater available at many garden centers.

Carefully place shoveled snow over perennials. Snow will insulate the plants from cold temperatures. The temperature below the snow increases by 2°F for each inch of accumulation. Do not use snow that has salt in it.

Remove snow from evergreens to avoid damage to branches. Brush snow off with a broom using an upward sweeping motion. Inventory all garden tools. Have shovels, spades and hoes sharpened.

Apply boiled linseed oil to wooden handles. Spray paint handles with a bright color to make them easy to find in the garden.

Adding wood ash to your garden soil will raise the soil pH. Add no more than the equivalent of a 5-gallon pail each year.

Turn houseplants on windowsills 180 degrees after every watering. This practice will prevent that stretched out to the sun look.

Prepare and plan for the upcoming growing season by checking out my five favorite gardening web sites.

University of Illinois Extensionís Hort Corner
http://www.urbanext.uiuc.edu/hort
Now really, did you expect some other web site? The Hort Corner is an easy to navigate, well-organized site with a wide variety of horticultural information. Selecting Trees for Your Home will help you find the right tree for your yard. The Bug Review allows you to control insects inside and outside your home. Ask the Expert allows you to ask an Extension horticulturist a gardening question. There is much more information on this site about perennials, annuals, roses, vegetables, bulbs, water gardens, strawberries and Christmas trees.

The Gardening Launch Pad
http://gardeninglaunchpad.com
If you ever wanted a good starting point for gardening information this is the place. The Launch Pad has thousands of links divided into well-organized categories from African violets to Xeriscape. A retired garden center coordinator from Austin, Texas, started the site.

The Web Garden at Ohio State University
http://webgarden.osu.edu
This award-winning site has a little bit of something for every gardener. A plants fact section has over 260,000 pages of information. Also on this site is a database of images of ornamental plants, turf, plant diseases and insects. Two hundred gardening how to videos and over 600 commonly asked gardening questions make this site a must visit.

Consumer Horticulture from North Carolina State University
http://www.ces.ncsu.edu/depts/hort/consumer
This is one of the more comprehensive horticulture sites on the Internet. It has over 4,000 fact sheets on specific plants including images, cultivars and cultural information. Five thousand links to horticulture related web sites organized into 50 categories and 100 fact sheets on growing vegetables, flowers, houseplants, trees and shrubs provide a gold mine of information for gardeners.

Gardening Resources at Cornell University
http://www.hort.cornell.edu/gardening/index.html
This is a fairly new and evolving site with a flower and foliage plant database, vegetable gardening guides and lawn care videos and calendar.