Kitchen Garden Forum

Mrs Blackbird has devastated my seedlings that were in a trough - I think the nice soft compost is good for building nests but all my cornflowers and poppy seedlings have had it.

Is it too late to start again? If I leave it till the weekend hopefully the nest will be finished and I can re-sow but is there any point this late on in the year?

Bad luck! The blackbirds have been nosing around in my patio containers too but I think you may find they are moving the compost around to look for insects & worms. . Every morning I come downstairs and find compost scattered all over the patio. As the seeds are fairly small, a new batch should germinate fairly quickly once the weather starts to warm up. I'd give it a try. They may just bloom slightly later than normal. Can you cover the trough up with some wire netting or fleece?

Thanks Primrose, yes I need to rig up some kind of deterrent so my other troughs don't get attacked as well! I suppose there is no harm in giving it another try for this year.

It's not just blackbirds that are attracted to easy-dig compost. I have to grow almost all my veg in containers here and have to put wire netting round them, or insect mesh over them to deter squirrels. Apart from the fact that they can damage quite a few plants while digging, until I started protecting everything I kept finding interesting, strongly growing 'weeds' growing, only to find they were sprouting peanuts...

Ken - you're lucky. In all the years we've been putting peanuts out for the birds and wildlife, I don't think I've ever come across a sprouting peanut from the hundreds our squirrels must have stolen and buried in our garden.
You obviously have a better class of peanut in your neck of the woods

(Incidentally, wasn't there an infamous ground nut / peanut growing scheme in Africa many years ago? . I seem to remember something as a child which cost the UK government millions of pounds but can't recall the specific details).

Perhaps http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanganyika ... nut_scheme

Ah yes,
"The Tanganyika Groundnut Scheme was a plan to cultivate tracts of what is now Tanzania with peanuts. It was a project of the British government. It was abandoned in 1951 at considerable cost to the taxpayers when it did not become profitable. Ground nuts require at least 500 mm (20 inches) of rainfall per year; the area chosen was subject to drought".

Sounds like a typical government project then.
We'll all know what to try growing next time another wet summer is forecast !