I have a new metal shed that I got for my plastic gourds and Trendsetter nest trays. I piled in the gourds I plan to use in 2016 and there are over 330 Super Gourds, Excluders, Troyer Horizontals and Troyer Verticals inside! Perhaps I will draft my neighbor Bob to build some shelves to help organize all those gourds. But there are so many gourds to organize and some will still be piled up! I probably should have bought a bigger building!
I now will start building pre-nests of pine straw in those gourds and getting them ready for hanging on my racks.
Here is a photo showing the inside of my gourd cave and all those gourds piled up! I just finished placing outside/inside porches on a bunch of my Super Gourds and some of these gourds can be seen in front of the pile.
Wow! Better insure those suckers! And here I am fussing about cleaning 12 plastic gourds for public site... putting it off, that is. I remember some years back, a couple of people shared photos of their unique gourd storage based in cabling the gourds into stacks of 12 - 3 layers of 4, then each stack could be stood up, moved about for storage.
Hi Steve,
I like your man cave/gourd cave, nice shot.
I have all mine stored in my pole shed, I have to keep them in large garbage bags to keep the storage area compact.
Great photo of a great new gourd housing unit. If I were a black widow or scorpion, that's the kind of place I would want to hang out in. Glad for you that hanging time is near. Best wishes this season.
~~TEAMED WITH A MARTIN GODDESS~~
Member/Mentor-PMCA. I do regular nestchecks and participate in PROJECT MARTINWATCH!! Coordinated 3 geolocator studies-2009, 2010 & 2013. State and Fed licensed bander (retired Jan., 2020)
I hope my homeowner's insurance insures those gourds/building! I believe it does. After that terrible storm in April 2011, the insurance adjuster did include the damage to my martin housing systems in the insurance payment.
Thanks for reminding me about the cabling. That is an option to consider for next season and I believe cabling could be attached inside this shed.
I have a "whole lotta pre-nesting" to do and I need to get started NOW! We still need to work on some of our satellite colonies.
Steve
Hey Ray,
Glad you like my "gourd cave"! Your system of using large garbage bags may work for me, too. Perhaps I can come up with a combination of cabling and garbage bags to store my gourds. Thanks for sharing that information.
Steve
Hey John,
Glad you like my "gourd cave" photo! You are so right about black widow spiders! We have problems with them in our sheds and I have seen black widows inside gourds, too. My gourd cave would be a black widow paradise. Fortunately, I haven't seen any scorpions yet, but I am sure they are around.
I hope you and Louise have a great purple martin season!
Steve, something to consider for shelving that works great for me is wire shelving that you can get from most hardware stores. I am sure that would work well for you. In my line of work we often do building demolitions and I am always looking for shelving from appliances like from ovens and stoves, refrigerators and anything that has wire shelving in it. Works for me, I have around a hundred gourds stored in my shed that way.
PMCA member and Martin fanatic....
2011 A pair of subbies fledged three young but none returned in 2012
2015 One Pair of subbies came and stayed a few nits but got chased away by Bluebirds and Tree swallows.
2017 0ne pair of subbies nested and fledged 4 young
2018 Tree Swallows AGAIN chased away any martins that wanted to nest
2019 Same old story................
Thank you for sharing that information about wire shelving! I will definitely need to do something next year when I get ready to store all my gourds to have some "order" to my Gourd Cave. I will definitely check out wire shelving! Thanks again.
Love that photo. Here is how I store my 24 SuperGourds. It is similar to what Louise described.
I take a piece of flexible plastic-coated copper wire about 36 inches long. I then tie a one inch loop on one end. Then I line up 4 gourds with their hanging holes aligned. I slide the non-loop end of the wire through the hanging holes and then through the one inch loop hole turning the gourds into a circle. After that, I tie the wire end back to the wire directly on the opposite side. This forms a handle. From that point, you can stack groups of 4 gourds on top of each other. I stack 24 but feel certain you could go higher. It could also be modified to loop more than 4 gourds per layer. I bet 6 would work fine. I need less than 3 feet by 3 feet of floor space. to store my gourds.
I am not sure if this would work for your horizontals or with your gourds with porches. I think if I had 300 plus gourds, I would do what you are doing now. Another benefit is the handle. I can easily carry 8 gourds from the storeroom to the pole. Another tip is to make the bottom layer a little looser (I use a 42 inch wire). That makes the stack more stable. I have been using the same wires for 15 years.
Yes, a lot of gourds! I still have other gourds that I'm not using!
I bet your martin colony will grow nicely in 2016 based on the excellent success you had in 2015. Soon you will be reporting your scout report!
Steve
Hey Gary,
Thanks for sharing that photo of your creative and efficient method of holding gourds together for storage! Maybe I can incorporate something like you are doing. My main issue is that I have so many gourds to store in a limited space. But using the methods that have been suggested may work for me at the end of the martin season in 2016 when it is time to store the gourds. Thanks again for sharing the photo and describing your method of storing gourds.
Nice Steve! I always wondered how you stored that many gourds.
I prefer to keep my in a separate shed, away from my house too. No matter how well I wash all those gourds, I just *know* I probably didn't kill every last mite / mite egg, so I don't want to risk an outbreak in my attached garage / house! I also bag mine up in the super-large black plastic bags in my shed - helps keep the spiders out. While I try to put on a brave face for my hubby (who is seriously afraid of spiders), I too, dislike the idea of putting my hand in a gourd where one may be lurking!
Best of luck to you this year Steve - Happy New Year!
Kathy
"Sometimes", said Pooh, "the smallest things take up the most room in your heart."
2023 - 82 pair
2022 - 80 pair
2021 - 75 pair
2020 - 78 pair
2019 - 80 pair http://kathyfreeze.blogspot.com
I used to leave all my plastic gourds out on the racks though I did lower the systems. Then in the last few years I started taking the gourds down and storing them in a shed that is part of my carport. But I wanted to try clean up my carport shed so I got the "gourd cave".
Storing the gourds out of the "weather" will help to preserve the plastic and keep mildew/mold off of it. When I left the gourds outside, many would develop a mildew/mold coating. I used a bleach/water concoction to clean off the gourds.
The plastic bag approach seems a good system and maybe I can use it when I take the gourds down after the martin season. The plastic bag would hold the gourds together and provide some order to my gourd cave.
Today I got my first bags of pine straw and will start pre-nesting and hanging gourds!
I hope you have Happy New Year and a great purple martin season.
That's a lot of gourds!! I just ordered another 48 Troyer horizontals. All but 24 gourds are now updated. I have 90 Troyers and 24 Heath total. I still have the Coates housing too. I'm going to get the poles straightened up at the Keithville colony and do some repair to the housing the first weekend in Feb.
Great hearing from you! Sounds like you are getting ready for the 2016 martin season and I know your martins will like the Troyer Horizontals!
Bob and I greatly appreciate you overseeing our Keithville satellite martin colony and taking care of the site. You have done an outstanding job monitoring the colony and the martins have done very well at that colony because of your assistance.
My gourd cave is gradually losing the gourds as I hang more and more of them on the racks. I believe I have about half on the racks now and plan to do more during the next few days.
Thanks again for your help and I look forward to seeing you soon.
Martin Colony History: 2011: Set up 16 room S&K house. 2012: nothing. 2013: lookers but no takers. 2014: lookers but no takers. 2015: 3 pair nested, 7 fledged. 2016: second year: S&K house is now an 8 room house and added a separate pole with eight Troyer Vertical Gourds. 13 pair nested, 50 fledged. 2017: third year: S&K house is now a 6 room house (blocked attic access). Same Troyer gourds.
With all the Gourds with round holes, I assume there are no Starlings where you live?? I live in Michigan, don't do round holes,or you'll have Starlings...
What would be the ratio of gourds to non gourd housing at you guys sites ? Is there any real benefit to having, for instance, wooden housing such as T14s in conjunction with gourd racks at a single site ?
At our two personal purple martin colonies, we use a combination of plastic gourds and aluminum houses and no wooden houses. Bob at one time used many wooden T-14s but he eliminated all these a number of years ago and replaced them with Lone Star Goliads and Trio Castles. He got tired of the maintenance issues with wood and heaviness of the T-14s. The change had no impact on his returning martins and they readily accepted the aluminum houses. Bob currently has 116 plastic Troyer Horizontals and Super Gourds and 132 aluminum compartments (three 16 room Goliads and seven modified 12 room Trio Castles). So he is about evenly divided between house compartments and gourds.
At my personal colony, I use 324 plastic Troyer Horizontals, Troyer Verticals, Excluders, and Super Gourds and 80 aluminum compartments (five Trendsetters). I use many more gourds for about a 4 to 1 ratio in favor of gourds.
At our satellite colonies we mainly use aluminum houses with a few Super Gourds and no wooden houses. At one time, Bob did have a few T-14s at several of our satellite colonies, but we replaced all these with aluminum houses and the martins readily accepted the change.
Personally, I don't plan to use wooden houses mainly because they are heavy and require more maintenance issues than aluminum. I have used wooden houses in the past at some of my colonies in Florida. I had good success with wooden houses and so did Bob. These houses are attractive to martins and using thick wood does provide good insulation qualities. But they sure can be HEAVY, particularly a T-14! And we have notice that wooden houses tended to be more attractive to starlings than gourds or aluminum houses. However, starlings will still nest in gourds and aluminum houses.
I tend to like gourds better than houses because gourds offer more territorial privacy for martins and may better minimize nest domination issues from aggressive martins. I usually have more domination problems with houses though the Trendsetter houses with staggered entrances and one hole per floor help to reduce this problem. Bob likes houses better and he has good occupancy levels in his Goliads and Trio Castles! Just personal preferences!
I really don't see any significant advantage in using wooden T-14s in conjunction with some gourd racks unless you want to have some different housing styles or test to see if martins may show a preference. Now a well made T-14 is a beautiful house and so stately looking so I can see why folks like these houses! Plus thick wood has good insulation qualities and has a "natural" feel and look inside the compartments. However, we have NOT seen any "preference" between wooden T-14s and gourds and the gourds have tended to be better occupied probably because the gourds reduce nest domination issues and may not reflect any actual preference. It is easier for an aggressive male martin to control several house compartments that are close together than several gourds spaced farther apart.
All our observations are based on what we have seen in northwest Louisiana and this may or may not be the same in other parts of the country.
I very much appreciate you taking the time to give a detailed opinion. Until the last couple of years I have always just used wooden houses. I grew up with wooden martin houses and when I became an adult with my own property I built more wooden houses. Last year I bought a Gemini gourd rack after seeing yours. I bought another Gemini for this year as well and it will go up this weekend. I still have 4 wooden houses that are serviceable, but it is about time to replace them. I had planned on replacing the 4 houses of 12 compartments each with two of the GHOST house designs of 18 compartments each, but looking at my schedule and the time required to build them as well as the arrival time of the martins means I won't be building them this year, but will leave up the 4 wooden ones that I have now along with the two Gemini racks. The cost of building two new wooden houses is not far off the cost of a Gemini when all is said and done so for the next year I will need to decide to go another Gemini or to go ahead and build the wooden ones again. I do like the wooden houses even though they are heavy and require maintenance as it reminds me of my roots in all this. I did notice that the birds tend to prefer the gourds over the housing with a near 100 percent occupancy of the gourds and the gourds were the first picked even the first season of use.
Martin Colony History: In 2024, 82 pair with 350 fledged youngsters. 110 total cavities available, 82 Troyer Horizontal gourds and a homemade PVC / metal 28 compartment unit, 1 fallout shelter. Hawk and owl guards included. Martin educator and speaker. President and founder of the Iowa Purple Martin Organization. Please visit Iowa Purple Martin Organization on Facebook link: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1627283871068161 Emails send to [email protected]. Subject line include Iowa Purple Martin.
And here I am fussing about cleaning 12 plastic gourds for public site... putting it off, that is. I remember some years back, a couple of people shared photos of their unique gourd storage based in cabling the gourds into stacks of 12 - 3 layers of 4, then each stack could be stood up, moved about for storage.
