Kitchen Garden Forum

With Piglet describing my gorgeous cat as 'a git' I think it rather put you off my offer earlier this month, no?
Bet you're regretting it now !!
SOME of us don't HAVE a mouse problem with our Bored Beans (she posted rather smugly...)
Tee Hee !

Perhaps its the air here in Leicestershire..the meeces love it obviously.

Like Chez I grow my beans in pots and transplant, my peas are started in drainpipe sections.

Something has been digging in the soil my greenhouse ...on one side it left a pile of soil (almost like a mole hill) and the other a hole (like a rabit scrape)
The greenhouse door has been closed

There is no other evidence of moles in the area and we don't have rabbits on site...and ideas?

A rat is what I'd think; it sounds like a description of my greenhouse a few months ago.

I'm not of the 'catch 'em and let 'em go' school, so I'm with you Barney!

Wellie - Git or not, a cat that kills mice is an asset! I would take you up on your kind offer if it (your cat) was at a different level in the food chain. Foxes love them! Just a pity the foxes don't do a better job of culling the mouse population.

Weed - I'm no expert, but as Chantal, I think it sounds like a rat too. Ugh...!

Thanks....you have confirmed my suspicions.

I was all for putting in a bid for the hire of the mousing cat at a good day rate but as we seem to have more than our fair share of foxes on site I daren't take the risk.

And she gets car-sick anyway....

I put in my Aquadulce about 2 weeks earlier than you, Compo, and the first ones are just appearing above the soil. Is this rather slow germination? I ask because we've had a comparatively warm spell [although it was quite cold earlier this month] and I expected to see the first shoots earlier.

Now, after reading ALL these words of wisdom, I'm sorry I didn't put at least half of them into pots or protect the beans with cut-up water-bottles. However, I don't think I've had trouble with mice - they've gone more for the peas.

The problem which I've had with spring-sown broad beans is that the weather starts becoming dry just when they need the rain, so they don't develop as strongly as those established in winter and become infested with blackfly. I've always managed a very good crop from the winter-sown ones, and so have given up sowing them in spring. It may depend on the type of weather you get, or the variety; In the OGC, Aquadulce is recommended for autumn sowing, Witkiem for Spring.

mike

Hello Mike

You say your beans are slow to show but how deep did you plant them? When we grow beans in a field we ridge them up with a potato ridger and of course they are later to show due to their increased depth.

Barney