Garden Centre

Tuesday, August 7, 2007

Taking the Myth ...

It’s coming up to the time of year to plant spring bulbs: daffodils, snowdrops, crocus, chionodoxa etc. Assuming, that is, you don’t have squirrels. I’ve tried all the ideas I can (short of trapping, which is a nonsense as we have at least three parks within a mile of the house) to stop them getting my crocus bulbs and I’ll tell you now what doesn’t work.

1 – paraffin. Fine in the first year but by the second year the little grey monsters have either got used to the taste or it's worn off because they ignored all the newly-planted paraffin-dipped bulbs but dug up all the older ones.

2 – wire mesh. Yes it works, but you can’t dig your garden, or hoe to get rid of perennial weeds, the plants tend to grow distorted and skew sideways if they come up under a bit of mesh rather than a gap, and you have to lift it every two or three years, divide all the bulbs and put it down again, but don’t worry about the hassle of it all because long before then the grey menace will have worked out how to take the pins out of the edge and poached the bulbs anyway.

3 – pepper spray. Works for three days or until it rains and costs a fortune.

4 – distraction feeding. They take the peanuts and the bulbs.

5 - And the one thing that does work. Grow your spring bulbs in pots, mulched with slate chippings – for some reason the squirrels hate the slate – maybe it cuts their little paws, or the noise it makes is too much for them, but either way, this one (so far) is the business. The problem is though, that crocus in pots mulched with slate look downright weird.

So now I grow snowdrops only, and so far the grey beasts don’t like snowdrops …

Labels: garden flowers, garden pests, spring bulbs, squirrels

The All Seasons Gardener at 10:01 AM 0 Comments

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