Time to get even, those horrid little varmits have met their match. Sorry, but my vegetables come first, feeding the family is paramount and I object to the rodents eating my seeds and seedlings, so battle has been waged. When you cost out the seed I've bought, I cannot afford to keep the rodent population supplied with top quality seed and seedlings.
So far we have got 6 mice, 1 rat and 1 rat foot (don't ask). That's 2 mice traps fully functioning for the last 3 nights.
We are wondering if we put in 10 traps, would we get 10 mice at a time. I'm tempted, as despite the traps, the remaining troublemakers have eaten all of my peas and pea shoots, plus my broad bean seeds.
I've implemented a well known deterrent today on my fresh batch of broad beans, holly branches, which mice are supposed to hate as they get their nose covered in prickles, fingers crossed that I will still have some bean seeds in their root trainers when I check tomorrow.
The polytunnel is now wonderfully warm, I've watered well and sown lots of salad leaves, mizuna, rocket, salad onions and spinach. Hopefully there will be so many seedlings that the mice won't manage to eat them all. If they do, we will have very healthy mice and a not so happy gardener.
There is so much to do, but very little time to do it. Hurting my back last Sunday hasn't helped, I've been out of action ever since, so the shallots are still in their nets and not in the soil. I hope that nature will help me and they will catch up. I've decided to grow shallots instead of onions, they are sweeter and more productive in the space we have.
The forecast for tomorrow is brilliant, so I'm hoping that I may manage to get more crops sown and maximise on the lovely warm days.
I feel the need to browse the seed catalogues.
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