Are Birds Good For Your Vegetable Garden? 101 Guide

Would you like to welcome birds to your Vegetable Garden? Are birds beneficial for Vegetable Garden?

Birds are essential for a healthy ecosystem, but new gardeners often wonder if birds can benefit their vegetable garden or not. Birds, though, can prove a nuisance for your Garden, but they, on the other hand, can incorporate several benefits.

Yes, Birds help in keeping down the insect population of your Vegetable Garden during the peak of the gardening and harvesting season. Insects like spiders, ants, and bugs become a massive problem by eating the leaves and greens off the plants. However, by attracting birds into the vegetable garden, gardeners can protect their young plants during the spring season, whereas ripen plants/fruits/ vegetables during the harvesting season.

Birds in the Permaculture gardening

Birds are essential for Permaculture gardening. From the visual point of view, Birds add entertainment, enjoyment, and comic and beauty relief to any garden. However, they keep insect problems in check while gifting fertilizer in the other practical world.

The right amount of bird interference in your Garden results in a more balanced, disease-free, and productive vegetable produce. 

Permaculture gardening doesn’t necessarily nurture habitat solely for birds but also focuses on producing food for humans. It aids in balancing and benefiting a human-wildlife partnership and turning problems into solutions. 

“Permaculture is a style of gardening where designing a garden space means benefiting in favour of every life that thrives.”

So, can you really invite birds into your vegetable garden? Well, absolutely yes.

How Birds Help your Garden?

There are many ways different birds can improve and help your fruit and vegetable garden. They can actually help your Garden much more than they might hurt. Here are a few benefits of inviting birds into your Garden:

• Pest Control: You do not need toxic chemicals or other harmful control methods when birds are munching pests in your Garden.
• Fertilization: Bird waste is rich in nitrogen and phosphorus, and it can provide enough fertilization to the Garden.
• Rodent Control: Big Birds, including Hawks, Owls, and Kestrels, keep unwanted rodents and small mammals out of the Garden.
• Weed Control: With their voracious appetites, seed-eating birds can help to minimize weed growth in the Garden.
• Pollination: Birds are popular pollinators who increase garden productivity. 
• Aeration: Birds, when scratching around the soil to find insects, also help in aeration.

Should You Attract Birds to Your Vegetable Garden? If yes, then How?

Yes, if you are looking forward to some insect deterring/ repelling solution, attracting birds to your Garden is one fine option.

Birds are good to have around gardens since they bring along multiple benefits. For example, birds in vegetable and fruit gardens eliminate the need for harsh chemical insecticides and aid in pest control.

Also, larger birds, including kestrels, owls, and hawks, help in controlling mice, voles, rats, squirrels, snakes, and other similar garden predators. 

Ways of attracting Birds in Vegetable Garden

• Incorporate flowers like Coneflower, Sunflower, Black Eyed Susan, Aster, and Marigold in your Vegetable Garden. Birds love these flowers, and therefore they will attract as a magnetic agent for your Garden.
• Install a birdhouse in your vegetable garden, and it will encourage birds to visit the place more.
• Install Bird feeders and Bird Baths in your Garden. 
• Birds are fond of pollen, seeds, berries, insects, and nectar, all of which aid in attracting them more and more.
• Incorporate local shrubs and plants to invite local birds into your vegetable garden. You can learn about such plant life by discussing plant experts, gardeners, and park administration in your area.

How do you Protect your Vegetable Garden from Birds?

How do keep Birds from eating Garden Vegetation? Attracting Birds to your vegetable garden is beneficial for the growth of the plantation, but you can allow birds to thrive there year-round.

Once the fruit and vegetation begin ripping, it is important to keep birds away from them. Before the fruits and vegetables have been produced, be strategic and keep birds from eating them. 

Here are a few tips and tricks that will help you keep birds from eating your garden produce:

• If you have a greenhouse vegetable garden, shut the doors and windows to keep the birds away at the right time.
• Whereas for open gardens, use bird netting to protect your fresh vegetable and fruit produce. Caution: Avoid using fishing lines or other harmful material that can damage birds physically.
• You can also hang old CDs, reflective bird repellents, scarecrows, and other bird deterring objects for open gardens.
• Provide something better and more accessible to the birds to feed on. If you already have a bird feeder in your Garden, the visiting guests will be less likely to attack your vegetable produce. 
• Plant garlic or cayenne pepper during the harvesting season, and it will probably keep the birds and other garden invaders away.

Birds in the Garden: Which to Attract and Deter

Top 8 Birds you must Attract in your Garden.

1. Bluebirds: These insectivorous birds are known for munching on beetles, weevils, caterpillars, grasshoppers, and other common garden insects.
2. Chickadees: They are voracious insect-eaters and can hunt hundreds of insects quickly.
3. Purple Martins: They are known for eliminating aerial insects, including moths, flies, and mosquitos, from the Garden.
4. Tanagers: They are wasp-eating specialists who are known for eating dangerous stingers from the Garden.
5. Hummingbirds: They are known for helping in pollinating different types of plants, flowers, fruits, and vegetation.
6. Goldfinches: These seed-loving birds help in eliminating weeds and other unwanted growth from the Garden.
7. Dunnocks: They are less conspicuous garden birds helpful for different types of vegetation.
8. Siskins: They will clear all the unwanted seeds from your Garden.

Wrapping up…

Without animals and birds, nature just limps along. The more diverse your backyard flock, the more it will attract birds resulting in making the Garden healthy and beautiful.

Inviting birds at the right time in your Garden will maintain a healthy ecosystem for both birds and plantations. Though be careful with the process since nuisance birds can also cause disaster to the fruits and vegetation growth.