And the culprit eating my pea shoots was…
Posted by Fiona Nevile in Pests and Diseases | 19 comments
Image by: John Good - NPS Photo
I’ve been busy tackling the mystery of what was eating my pea shoots. These peas were planted in October under fleece. They germinated well and were at the stage where they needed to be supported by twigs. At first I suspected slugs. My open beer traps didn’t attract a single slug. Then Cath gave me the tip that traps need to be covered and I remembered that years ago my mum gave me the ultimate in slug traps. I found it in the greenhouse and set it up with a trill. But even the mighty Slug X beer fest didn’t attract a single mollusc reveller.
Also there are a lot of tasty pak choi and lettuce seedlings under cloches and these haven’t been touched.
Meanwhile Jo from Little Ffarm Dairy suggested mice. I thought mice were only a danger at the seed sowing stage. Even though my patch of peas is just a few feet away from a mouse hotel – I’ve seen them playing when the Min Pins are indoors – the seeds didn’t appear to attract mice before they germinated.
I like mice but I love peas.
Feeling a bit of a pig, I set two traps in the giant cloche – perhaps mice like their five a day too? Yesterday morning the cheese had been gently eased off one trap.
“Ah ha!” I thought. “It’s just a matter of time until I catch my suspects.”
This morning I found a dead mouse in the other trap. So mice like eating pea shoots. I wonder if they ate the carrot seed?
I have set both traps again. Although the dead mouse was very plump it couldn’t have eaten so many shoots on its own. So I’m expecting more visitors who would welcome a little cheese with their pea shoots.
Image by: John Good – NPS Photo
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I’d rather keep the mice. Much more fun. Peas aren’t really worth the effort.
I was thinking, I recall an episode of river cottage where some whacky woman went and ‘asked’ the mice to leave.. have you seen it? Can’t you give it a try??? Just a long shot :S
Oh, it’s such a conflict: we too adore the tiny fieldmouse and even the more pesky house cousin. I guess we must be townies at heart because any true farmer or country style dweller would not spare a thought for any pest that threatens crops.
I remember one dark evening last year when I went down to my shed with a torch to light the way. At the shed door a mouse was climbing through one of their entryways, which had been chewed through at my eye level. It was so startled by the light that it simply pushed through and dropped to the ground. A long fall for such a tiny body. It must have been OK because I could not find it anywhere.
Sadly, any pest is the enemy of the produce grower and must be dealt with. Hopefully humanely.
Years ago as a teenager I netted the peas I was growing to protect them from the birds. When I took the nets off at the end of the season several tiny mice skeletons were catapulted from the nets. I had forgotten all about it till just now. Yes mice do like peas 🙂
My dad used to tie a bit of bacon on the trap, which always seemed to work.
When I had cats, I never minded that they were supplementing their diets with mice (I was too poor to buy them anything but the cheapest dry food) and only made my boyfriend take away mice from them twice: once when I was tired and the poor thing was cheeping every time it got batted, and the other time when it was so stiff with rigor mortis I was worried for their health.
Then there was the night when we got home late something largish and shiny popped up when I rolled the front door over it. I shuddered and jumped back (okay I shrieked, too), thinking that it was a bark beetle, which the locals described as being so large that it was “a handful of beetle”. Nope. Closer inspection revealed that it was a neatly flayed mouse that was brown because its flesh was oxidizing. I looked at one of the cats and sternly said, “You eat that!”, whereupon he picked up the mouse and slunk off to a dark corner of our apartment to eat it.
aawww poor ickle meeses… from now on you shalt go by the name of fiona the mouse murderer LOL.
When I think of all the tiny ones I rescue from the cats in breeding season and nurse back to health covered in cat spit and then go out of my way to release in parts of the garden that they stand a chance of not being caught again straight off…. its difficult to realise other people would welcome my feline brigade of mouse maimers, and are desparately trying to murder the little nibblers.
is it terribly namby pamby of me to wish you could use humane traps rather than lethan ones? Though I suppose that would just relocate the problem to someone else’s garden/field.
I don’t suppose there’s much chance that mice have the sort of collective memory displayed by blue tits and sheep, and that they will learn to avoid the peas from the example of their dead comrades?
If you have some dark chocolate, that works very well to attract mice, as does apple chutney! When they moved into “my” bit of the garage, they went for a bar of Tesco Value plain chocolate and some white chocolate chips from my camping stash, then decided to help themselves from the one un-lidded jar of maturing chutney. Naturally they ignored the boxes of apples on the next shelf.
Have you tried peanut butter as a bait? I use it in the house, and mice seem to love it. It is also harder for them to eat it without getting caught. But I thought peas were safe once they had germinated, too!
Wy not try choclate in the traps this is a very old idea that i was told about when i lived in Brandon Suffolk, it works better than cheese..