Kitchen Garden Forum

Most of my freshly sown Sweet Pea's in my small greenhouse have I suspect been consumed by mice, for the love of me I am unable to find out how they are getting in.

Dear Shallot Man, i can just about remember years ago whilst working on a old house, i was sat down having a sandwich when a mouse appeared out of between two floor boards, you would have had a job getting a pencil in between them.

Sorry about your Sweetpeas, very annoying indeed.

would a greenhouse cat help?

i'm considering one. the resident mouse is getting far too comfortable. grr.

Run your seeds through paraffin. They don't like it!

I went over the lottie this morning and found about six broad beans shoots lying on top of the soil the mice had dug down the side and pulled the bean out leaving the shoot there. I put a plastic wire fence round to stop the deer and pheasants, how can you win . Has any one else had this problem.

Good morning Old Codger, i haven't had this problem this year, though that might be something to do wth the broadbean seed is still in it's packet.

You would have thought with the amount of mice the cats catch there wouldn't be any left.
Lets hope they don't take many more.

I would think twice about getting a greenhouse cat as they usually like to make a bed out of your seed trays. I had a tray full of newly germinated streptocarpus that never recovered from the cat sleeping on them.

If you are only using plant pots, then a cat might just do the trick, but I think the application of paraffin is a well known solution to mice eating seeds.

Alia. If I was to put our cat in the greenhouse, the mice would have to have a salmon flavour.

Somebody told me that mice can't abide the smell of mothballs although I don't know whether you can still buy the old fashioned varieties. Maybe this is just an urban myth.

I have tried the paraffin trick (for eating peas, not sweet peas, and broad beans) and, unfortunately, it didn't put them off at all. Yorkshire mice must be more greedy.

Hardware stores sell some very pliable thin metal sheets which could probably be used around and over pots and trays in a greenhouse, but would be too expensive for outside use, though. Or can you raise your sweet pea pots/trays in trays of water, so that the mice would have to swim to get to them? Sounds desperate but might work. I use this method to keep snails off valuable plants.

A tip last year was to grow your pea and bean seedlings in modules or peat pots etc in the greenhouse and then stand them in trays on 10-12 inch pots (the right way up) so the mice cannot clamber up the pots, but be careful they can get up the greenhouse frameworkd and jump down. This did work for me last year, this year they got acrobatic.

I also heard that crushed up extra strong mints next to the seeds helps to deter them.....

CoMpO