Homemade Hummingbird Nectar Recipe

by Judi on Apr 23, 2006

Attracting Wild Birds

No need to buy the powdered Hummingbird Nectar mix from the store for this rewarding hobby. Instead, make your with this simple hummingbird nectar recipe. You only need water and white sugar - super simple and easy to make.

Use the following proportion:
1 part regular white sugar to 4 parts water.
Example: 1 cup sugar, 4 cups water

1. Boil the water.
2. Add sugar and stir until dissolved.
3. Let cool.
4. Refrigerate in a designated hummingbird feeder pitcher.

Using a microwave works too. Put the water in a microwave safe container and heat to boiling point. Carefully remove and add sugar. Stir until the sugar is dissolved. I fill my clean feeders and set them aside to cool and let the rest cool a bit before storing in the fridge.

Nothing extra: There is no need to add anything extra to the mixture, i.e. coloring, honey, etc. It’s not necessary and could be harmful. Honey will quickly ferment becoming poisonous to the birds.

Storing hummingbird nectar: I store all varieties of my wild bird (Orioles, Hummingbirds, Butterflies, etc) “juice” up to two weeks in the fridge, but generally need to make it more often than that.
Tip: I use a Rubbermaid container or a clean milk carton, clearly marked, to store my hummingbird juice in the refrigerator. Another idea I recently read is to freeze the extra. I may try this by putting it in a freezer bag and freezing flat. Once it is frozen, it would break up easily to place into the feeder.

Discard: If the juice in the feeder(s) becomes cloudy, or mucky, empty, clean and refill.

Cleaning: Make sure bird feeders are cleaned every few days to a week to prevent any ickies. Cleaning with a solution of vinegar and hot water is good.

Location and Feeders: More than one feeder, placed strategically around the yard, will encourage more hummingbirds to visit at a time. They are territorial birds, so place feeders out of the line of sight of each other.
note: however, I have had more than one at a feeder at time with no ill-will directed towards each other. Experiment a bit.

Enjoy your visitors!

Want to attract Orioles? Here’s our Homemade Oriole Nectar Recipe - and a few other Oriole feeding ideas.

—
Judi Cox is a wife and mother of 4 children. Her hobbies include making handmade soap from scratch, gardening, crafts, web design and maintaining Mom’s Little Garden ( http://www.momslittlegarden.com/ ), an online resource for pregnant mothers, as well as her personal website, Momma Muse (http://www.mommamuse.com/ ).
—
Copyright (c) 2006 Judi Cox
Permission is granted to copy and reprint this article keeping author byline in tact.

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Composting

by Judi on Apr 21, 2006

I’ve been reading gardening blogs today.  I came across one that had a composter *I* could do. 

Kerry’s Garden has some nice photos throughout the blog.  But what sparked my curiousity the most was the post Compost Time.  This seems a perfect solution to my always wondering how I would make an effective compost pile that the bugs and dogs would stay out of.  I’m excited at the thought of finally having a good worm composter!

I’m anxious to give it a try, but may wait until we decide what we’re doing with out house. Which, btw, we are now off the market - can’t describe how glad I am.  We realy didn’t care for our realtor (INTERVIEW them prior to commiting!).  Thankfully, she did enough “wrong” that her company let us out of the contract, penalty-free.

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Recycling nature landscaping

by Judi on Apr 21, 2006

I’ve always made use of items around the yard.  When we had a tree cut down several years ago, I used one longer, large piece as a bench to put near our fire pit.  Another peice made a base for a bird bath.  I didn’t like the original pillar for the bird bath, feeling it was too thin and therefore, a hazzard with small child. 

 

I placed other peices of stumps in the flowerbeds to use as a flat surface for the houseplants (I always bring them outdoors in the summer).

This year, with our large pile of wood from the downed trees, I found two perfect pieces to use as a step to our porch.

 

The day I put the steps in, I ended up with some seriously muddy sloggers (my all-time favorite summer shoes) and I stuck 2 sticks in the ground near my steps.  A perfect place to let the mud dry and crumble off.  With a good storm, it washes right off. 

I planted sedum around the stump edges.  It’s already starting to grow and fill in.

We had so much mulch from the cedar trees that I won’t need to buy any mulch this summer.  A major plus is that it smell much better than the rich, dark mulch, and the cedar will help prevent weed growth (so I’ve heard, but am not necessarily seeing this as true).

 

Here you see one bare tree stump (too early to bring the houseplants out just yet) and another post indicating the corner of the flowerbed.  I also used some nice pieces to line the fronts of a few beds, as a border, rather than stone or typical edging.

The phlox and tulips are in full bloom, as is a dandelion.  I try not let the dandelions take over, as they have a tendancy to do, but I don’t kill them all off either.  I love to see a few pretty yellow blooms throughout the yard.  And the kids love to “make wishes” with their floating seeds.  I even see a few periwinkles in the bottom left corner. 

Last month, before I started getting the beds cleaned up from left-over fall leaves, I got a picture of a bunch of daffodils ready to bloom:

 

And then a week later, in full bloom:

 

They seemed to maintain their blooms for so long this year. 

One last picture:

 

A few years ago, we had a long-time visitor to our frog house.  A big old toad.  We enjoyed him for weeks before he moved on.  We have ladybugs, praying mantis, toads all around the yard, hummingbirds and more.. We even had a few deer in our yard last summer - a total surprise to us, since our yard is fenced and has large shrubs all around.

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Downed Tree

by Judi on Apr 21, 2006

Last summer, one of our three mature trees (in our front yard) died.  We managed to get all of it cut down, but about 12 or 15 feet of it.

My dad came over with his chainsaw and a friend. They got it cut down to a stump about 2.5 feet tall, before the friend flooded the chainsaw.  It was put up for another day.

 

Notice the trees in the background.  Those are cedar trees.  We had about 15 of them that lined the front of our property.  They were old and ragged looking.  I’d asked for years to get them cut down.  But we knew it was going to be quite a job.  When we put our house on the market to sell it this year, the row of cedars was one of the first outdoor projects to finally get done.

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