I hate those meeces to pieces

There’s almost nothing that can be done on the allotments right now. On 201 we can’t paint fences because the wood is too wet, we can’t dig because the soil is too wet. On 235 we were chagrined today to discover that something (mice?) has been along and eaten several of the broad beans we carefully protected with double-glazing panels just a week ago.

So we had a mystery: mice, birds, some kind of insect or monopod? We think it’s mice and there’s not a great deal to be done about that, except that June, our neighbour at the other end of the site, when we’re working on 201, gave us a tip. If you grow your beans and peas in pots, when they’ve got a good root system you can just lift off the pea or bean from which they grew and which is what attracts the mice to the plants. So when we plant our spring broad beans in the greenhouse, that’s what we will do. For now, on plot 235, we’ve simply put some more twiggy branches around the plants in case it’s birds, and stuck some bamboo canes that were dipped in Jeyes Fluid around the perimeter of the plants, in the hope that it will confuse the noses of the mice.

And Sunday is Seedy Sunday here in Hove actually, so I hope to find some seeds to swap/buy and I’ll tell you all about it next time!

Labels: allotment-broad-beans, allotment-mice, allotment-peas, allotment-pests, allotment-seedy-sunday