mice on allotments

[akeybreaky]

Has anybody any tips on how to deter mice from eating our beans and peas ? They seem to wait patiently untill the young plants are about two inches high, and then dig down (very neatly) to remove the remains of the bean - usually leaving the dying plant behind, but sometimes removing those too. I have tried covering with nets (buried at edges and weighted down with stones) and scattering holly around the plants - to no avail. I have also tried leaving the dead mouse found on our kitchen floor (a present from Cassie or Fella, our home cats) in the middle of the bean patch as a warning of dire future consequences should the beanfest continue, but somebody more sensitive than I removed it !!! I dont want to use poison, as clearly our allotment is part of the countryside which the mice inhabit. So we are the intruders after all. I just dont want to waste my time sewing bean and pea seeds !!

Akey Breaky

[becks77]

Hi,
I shall watch this thread with interest, last year I planted loads of beans went back to water the next day and the little b****rs had picked them all out and left them in a neat pile at the end of the row, presumably to collect when I wasn't around!
They also love my sweetcorn and devoured it all on the cobs last year, so I have sown it at home this year to keep an eye.

[grahamhobbs]

The old method was to soak the peas in paraffin for 1/2hr before sowing, but sowing in rootrainers or toilet rolls and planting out when they are about 6-8" high is probably better if more work.

[Mrs Moustoir]

Don't get me going on mice As well as my coriander seeds, they've also polished off a tray of cosmos seedlings this week.

I've tried the paraffin thing - didn't really work, they just ate the shoots and left the remains of the seed pea behind. Tend to agree with grahamhobbs, you just have to grow them a bit bigger before planting out.

Otherwise, sow them thickly in a piece of guttering, plant out when they are about 5cm high and hope that the little critters don't get round to eating the lot.

[grahamhobbs]

Forgot about the gutter, this is how do peas. I hang the gutter from the polytunnel roof so the mice can't get to them until they are big enough to plant out.