I'm not sure what Gilmour intended them to be used for. I purchased mine to fertigate faster than I could with a watering can. They *are* faster than a watering can. They will certainly work if you want to foliar feed though you might want something that will give you more of a mist. These don't give a super-fine mist. I found that there are limited options for fertigation: 1) Hose-end sprayers. These are accurate but in order to get the accuracy they significantly reduce the flow with a restricted venturi tube or similar. This allows them to work accurately for most people. These take ~5x longer to water, they cost ~$10-$20. 2) Source siphon systems - these include things like Hozon (~$15-$30) and Mazzei(venturi tube) injectors (around $100 by the time you get a bypass system installed). The Hozon and etc are all at set rates of like 16:1 or sometimes 20:1. Those ratios are too small for my liking. I'd have to refill a 5 gallon bucket with solution too often during the summer. The Mazzei injectors might work better. I didn't try one yet. I don't see how they could give full flow and inject at the correct rate. If someone has experience with them please let me know! 3) "Proportional mixing" systems like the EZ-Flo fertilizer injector. These do not work. They do not mix at the advertised rates. ~$65 wasted. You can waste another $25 trying to get it to work. It still won't work. 4) Dosmatic/Dosatron/Mixrite style pump injectors. These will work as advertised. I bought a Dosmatic 1% yesterday. It's still on the way. The unit itself was ~$260 shipped. It will also require a bypass setup which is another ~$20 if you build it yourself. They also have wear parts that will need to be replace yearly (for ~$10). They will operate at full flow and have adjustable injection rates. They go as high as $500 for some units with more options and higher flow/pressure rates. I've basically tried all of these except the Mazzei style injectors and I'm landing on a dosmatic style system. By the time you try every other kind and find it lacking you've spent 3/4 the price of a dosmatic anyway. With a 500:1 injection rate (~1.5 tsp / gallon) I can water 2500 gallons from a 5 gallon bucket of concentrated solution. This is at full flow with perfect injection rates. It costs more and it makes a little pumping noise when you operate it but it will be worth it to me. Ask yourself this: how much is your time worth to you? If you use a hose-end sprayer you will spend 5x the time watering. If it takes you an hour a day to water instead of 20 minutes that's 243 hours a year. Even if you only have to water once a day for half the year that's 121 hours saved. 3 whole work weeks. This now sounds like a hard sell for a dosmatic but, shrug, I've tried everything else and got fed up. I'll make a video of my installation and show you the Ez-Flo that I had in there before.

We live SE of Seattle. When we started feeding birds all our feeders where open to the weather including a platform feeder with a wire bottom for drainage. We had lots of birds. My bride asked if I could make her a hexagon or octagon feeder. I said; "Certainly my dear." I decided I would build a large covered feeder so the birds could come in out of the rain and/or snow mimicking your thoughts. It had a half hexagon hopper on each end for different types of seed and a platform between them. A roof covered the whole thing. We had about a third of the birds we did before. You could not see them well and it was too dark to take pictures. We used it for a couple of years and it didn't get any better. My bride never like it. She showed me a hex feeder picture in a magazine like the one she wanted in the first place. She asked if I would build one like it and get rid of the covered one. I agreed because of the lack of birds using it. I had also come to the reality that the birds have been doing just fine without an umbrella for eons. All you have to do is keep the seeds dry in the hoppers so they won't mold if it gets wet. The seed on a platform, or the ground, is just like the natural seed the birds eat in the rain and snow. We only put out enough for them to eat in a day to keep it from rotting. When it snows, we tamp it down and put more seed on top. As it melts, the birds will find the seed from before. It is too cold for rot or mold to be a problem. The new open feeder took less than a couple of weeks for the birds to get back too and surpass the numbers we had before the covered feeder. We have our hummingbird feeders under the eves near windows for two reasons. We can see them thru the windows and the feeders stay a little warmer for the Anna's when the temperature gets below freezing. Next time it rains, look at the birds. They go about their business like they do when it's dry. They must to survive. If you ever see a wet bird, it is ether sick and/or hasn't maintained it's feathers or it just took a bath. Your open feeders will be fine. Enjoy your birds, Bob

the block cage is the one for the molded woodpecker blocks the other are the square suet cages. When i make my mix i use some peanut butter and thicken the suet mix with cornmeal or rolled oats and mixed bird seed and when the fats harden up enough to spoon into the metal cage and i press it down to fill the block. and if it's not hardened enough i stick it in the freezer for awhile before i put it out. the others i use sorghum or molasses and peanut butter in summer instead of fats and they are gummy enough to hold together too. but i also used the plastic trays from old suet blocks or the halfs of the plastic trays that raspbpberrys or blackberrys come in and put them in the suet cages if the mix is not thick or gummy enough

Our Cardinals bring us such pleasure. We've noticed the male always appears first, maybe to ck if it's safe enough for her to come. Pairs seem very devoted to each other -the male offers his female tidbits of ??? when she first joins him, looks kinda' like they're kissing. I read they are groundfeeders, and ours must be or like what they find on our lawn a whole lot. It's not unusual to see 4-6 males at a time near flowerbed around two large trees close to the front porch...but if a female drops in her 'mate' chases the other males away. They prefer birdbath in back over ones in front and side yard-perhaps because trees are closer to it. Year before last we had the pleasure of watching a pair build a nest in a very large wreath on one wall of our covered patio. It had bright colored thread woven in & bits of dryer lint tucked in to line it, our contribution decorate the nursery. When two eggs appeared we could hardly wait for the babes to appear! Then very early one morning our Doxie simply would not stop barking or come away from the top step to the entrance near the nest. I went out to see what he was having such a fit over and a snake was coiled up, hiding behind behind a potted plant in the corner! A neighbor came and killed it for me (I was too chicken.) The #&!@$ thing had swallowed both eggs, giving me four MORE reasons to hate snakes -two for the poor parents who were so confused and upset and two for the babies to be. Attempting to save the eggs the man who killed it chopped egg sections out, but they were already broken. They've raided our bluebirds houses too and as far as we're concerned, the only good snake is a dead one.