You're absolutely correct, Anita. I never put any type of food source near the nestboxes for that very reason. No point in giving Mr. and Mrs. Blue the problem of having to defend their nesting territory from hungry birds. House sparrows here eat mealworms as well, so I've had to be crafty about feeding the blues--we have multiple mealworm feeders but only the blues and the Carolina wrens know about the one out front! You know, when I took over one of the bluebird trails I currently monitor, several of the nestboxes had metal catfood cans nailed to the top--I'm sure the previous monitor used these to put mealworms in. Taking the cans off the nestbox rooves was my first renovation--definitely not a good idea because other birds also like mealworms--that was a fight waiting to happen. Kathy

black oil sunflower seeds probably attract more birds than any other feed. you can use a tube feeder or a mesh wire feeder or even a hopper feeder. Suet is a great treat in winter but some birds eat it year around. you can use a suet cage and buy suet cakes or make your own suet mix. there are lots of old posts on here making suet. if you like doves and juncos and other ground feeders the seed mixes with cracked corn ot millet do good but they also attract blackbirds and starlings and cowbirds which lots of people don't want around. the summer song birds such as tanagers and orioles and grosbeaks like fruit or berrys or drink from necter feeders. or plants with berrys or blooms and blossoms. the woodpeckers i get here love nuts and suet and cracked corn and millet. robins and bluebirds like mealworms or grubs or earthworms the tits and chickadees and nuthatches like suet or hulled sunflowers or boss or nuts.

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

Cutting wedges is a great technique. But sometimes you will have a root system that is lopsided, that is there are areas where there are no roots and some areas with all the major ones. So I would take my time to figure out any pattern and cut wedges accordingly. I ended up doing the same wedge technique to a guava. It had such a dense mat of roots (like hibiscus have) that is impossible to know where to begin. I ended up cutting three wedges with fresh soil. It was already in 511. But the new 511 was much more obviously porous. It filled it out pretty quickly and everything seemed like uniformly populated the next time I took it out and a hard time figuring where the previous wedges were located. It is hard to say whether one should bare root now. I would take it out of the pot and examine the roots carefully. And only do a full bare root if you see a problem like a clusters of dead roots. I also would use this opportunity to prune some of the bigger roots unless they are the only thing that you can find.