Pest Control!

[lloydy106]

Morning all

How do you deal with pests on your allotments? Im talking everything from grubs and bugs to pigeons and deer!

Our plot is plagued with magpies and pigeons. We get our fair share of moles too and was just curious as to how other sites get around such problems.

[Dorothy rouse]

We have loads of magpies and pigeons and also squirrels, we are surrounded by huge trees, so nothing we can do, just have to net everything, or they just eat your veg, and the squirrels love the strawberries.

[roitelet]

Moles are a problem but I have found that the soiled bedding from ferrets stuffed down the holes has done the trick and sent them away. You just need a friend who keeps ferrets.

[Two_Sheds]

Our plot is plagued with magpies

Magpies don't eat your crops, they actually might be doing you a favour by eating leatherjacket grubs

Woodpigeons are a total menace though, stripping brassica and pea plants. Sparrows will attack beetroot & pea foliage in early spring too.
Blackbirds will take strawberries & currants (they prefer to have one bite out of each fruit, rather than just eat one or two fruits) You have to keep these plants under nets.

[noviceveggrower]

I was once told that you should stick something like garlic to keep moles away. Don't know if that is an old wives tales though.
I lost a lot of my currant crop to the birds last year. The guy before me pack the currant bushes in I have a size 4 shoe and I couldn't get my feet between the bushes at one point. So managed to thin them out autumn time to various people. So this year I plan to get all of them covered up. Think the only things they wouldn't touch was the gooseberries.