hi I'm Marcy degwin the aspiring gardener and today we're going to make homemade birdseed and what that means is that we're going to buy the different types of seed and mix it according to what works best for the birds visiting our garden it's kind of hard to know at first what's going to go best in your area so what you can do is you can go and find a store where they sell it by the pound and buy a little bit of each kind of see that they have here I have what you call a squirrel mix which which a lot of people like to put that in one feeder in hopes that the squirrels will stay in that feeder and maybe avoid the other feeders that you had intended for birds so it's got corn and seeds and and a lot of good stuff and I think there's probably larger birds that also like that this is your typical wild birdseed which has millet sometimes it'll have flax it has sunflower seeds but I think predominantly the light colored seed is millet and that's what it mostly has so well it's the most inexpensive unless you know that the birds visiting your garden will eat the millet a lot of times it ends up on the ground and it sprouts and it becomes a mess here I've got Niger thistle seed which is probably your most expensive seed but a lot of people like to bring in the yellow house finches and this is their favorite so it depends on what you're drawing but if you want finches this is probably the best seed and usually that's put in a feeder by itself the most common seed for most birds is the black oil sunflower seed which I found to be the best one for my garden and I've gone to the point where that's pretty much all I put out because they eat every single seed but what I did to come to that point was I started with maybe two thirds of this wild bird mix and then I would put a little bit more seed at a time and just kind of see how much of what does and again maybe even a half and a half mix is a pretty good thing to start with now if you want to you can put this niger thistle in with it but you have to make sure that the type of feeder you have isn't going to cause it to fall to the ground because it is really expensive so if you're going to use a tray feeder or some type of feeder where it'll hold the seed then this is okay to mix it right in if you don't and you have a upright feeder it has to have small holes that will hold the Niger thistle feed in so buy as many kinds as you can try them see what happens see what disappears find the best mix the most affordable mix you're going to find is the one that the birds are going to eat not the one that's going to be on the ground turning to seed so see what works in your garden buy and buy bulk try things out you'll find out the best homemade bird seed for you you