Selfsufficientish.com

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

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.

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.

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.

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.