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Vegging Out Hints, tips and queries about your vegetable crop

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Old 22-04-2008, 07:14 PM
Germinator
 
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Default what's eating my broccoli plants???

After last year when I tried three times to establish brassica plants and each time the whole lot was promptly eaten - I assumed by pigeons as I had seen them on the garden - we put up fruit cages over the whole area to stop the blighters! but - now again all my plants have been eaten again, twice! any ideas? I have put down slug pellets - although there are no dead or live slugs visible, and mouse poison. Birds and rabbits can't get in either. The plants are being eaten within hours of planting out!

any help welcome - or we'll be eating carrots and leeks all winter instead!
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Old 22-04-2008, 07:20 PM
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Might be mice.
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Old 22-04-2008, 07:28 PM
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or slugs cause there eating my cabbage seedling. the little ..........
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Old 22-04-2008, 08:46 PM
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Are they vanishing totally or disappearing bit by bit?
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Old 22-04-2008, 09:06 PM
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Could be snails, they're crafty and avoid the little blue smarties that the slugs fall for. What does the damage look like. Also it might be worth waiting till your plants are a bit bigger before you plant them out.
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Old 24-04-2008, 07:19 PM
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why would you put poison in your garden??
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Old 24-04-2008, 08:11 PM
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if possible, go on a night hunt with a torch,if its slugs or snails you'll maybe catch them red handed
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Old 24-04-2008, 09:11 PM
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If they were chopped off at the base it could be cutworms!
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Old 25-04-2008, 01:16 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by lottie dolly View Post
if possible, go on a night hunt with a torch,if its slugs or snails you'll maybe catch them red handed
thanks, done it - and put in a beer trap - no show. but my mouse poison has now gone.....

ta!
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Old 25-04-2008, 01:18 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by bio-intense View Post
why would you put poison in your garden??
We have real mouse problem - we are in the middle of the countryside and surrounded by fields - so we have mice all the time! I would be interested to hear of any other way of dealing with them - but on this scale we would need to set and re-set traps every day and i cant use the electro-magnetic repellers as we have animals ourselves!
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Old 25-04-2008, 01:21 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by shirlthegirl43 View Post
Are they vanishing totally or disappearing bit by bit?
bit by bit - leaves nibbled down to the veins, and then over the next few nights, some of the veins going too. I put a cut-off plastic bottle over a newly planted one yesterday and it has not gone yet - so here's hoping it is the mice...

thanks!
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Old 25-04-2008, 11:38 PM
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Several years ago I had a problem with rodents eating my plants and I put a "solar molar" in the veg plot and I have had no worries with them ever since!
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Old 26-04-2008, 12:10 AM
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What about flea beetles? can they do this damage? think they ate my cabbage last year and after my peas now, don't know how to get rid of them.
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