Other kinds of seeds

I save my melon and squash seeds and put them out for the birds and squirrels. The cardinals seem to especially enjoy cantelope seeds, which I always leave on the composter.

Even though I don't generally encourage squirrels in the yard, I have enjoyed putting pumpkins out for the squirrels. There are so many squirrels around anyway that it doesn't seem to increase the numbers we normally get in the yard, and it keeps the occupied and away from the bird feeders. We made a few "pumpkin runs" in the car to gather up intact, non-carved pumpkins people put out at the curb following Halloween and Thanksgiving. The first year, I cut in half two or three pumpkins a day and put them out in the backyard. I then discovered that they can do the job themselves.

They eagerly ate some of the seeds and cached the rest all over the lawn and garden. We might have some pumpkin plants growing come spring. I'm assuming they'll be easy to pull up, or we'll have one of the larger pumpkin farms in Syracuse! When they were done with the pumpkins, I put the pumpkin carcasses in the compost bin.

We collected the uncarved pumpkins people put out to the curb in November. These are the pumpkin carcasses that were left after the squirrels had finished the seeds.

Last updated 10/29/2009