Allotment Gardening Advice Help Chat
Growing => Grow Your Own => Topic started by: fallen angel on January 29, 2015, 14:34
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No I am not looking to grow them :tongue2: I have moved to a lovely new place 6 months ago so keen to get the veg plot going. BUT I have been told the previous occupant tried to grow carrotts but the badgers came in and ate them! So my question is what can I grow with this in mind? Or will they try and eat everything?
Thanks in advance.
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We have loads of badgers round us but the only thing we had a problem with was sweetcorn. They ate the lot (about 60 plants) in 2 nights! Apparently it is their favourite thing. :D They waited until it was about 5 days away from ripe! No problems with anything else although we haven't grown many carrots.
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Oh no sweetcorn was going to be a huge crop this year as we love it :-( well I can try I suppose and pray they go for the carrots that I may now plant far too many of in hope that it distracts them from my sweetcorn :-)
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I had badgers visiting my garden for the first time last year - they 'only' dug holes and pooed in them (every day :ohmy:) and ignored the sweetcorn even though it was growing and ripening right next to where they had been digging.
It's possible that their little badger-brains require their feeding and toilet areas to be completely separate, although it's more likely that, like the grey squirrels round here, they have to learn rather than instinctively know how tasty they are.
Let's hope that mine, and yours, stay blissfully ignorant for a nice long time! ;)
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I was planning to grow sweetcorn this year (even bought the seeds :() until some experienced fellow plot holders a few plots along told me the only thing they have given up growing over the years is sweetcorn because the badgers always have all of it.
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Badgers are destructive when close to sweetcorn, but a good strong wire fence that they cannot bash down does work, so you'd be OK!
As for them eating carrots, I've never heard of that one, as they'd make it easier for them selves just going for other stuff - if they liked them, and as Jay says, they have different habits!
The blighters took all our crop out two years ago, so we grow the sweetcorn at home now, behind a 13" brick wall.... that buqqers the badgers..;0) They don't seem to like peas and beans for some reason!
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I was planning to grow sweetcorn this year (even bought the seeds :() until some experienced fellow plot holders a few plots along told me the only thing they have given up growing over the years is sweetcorn because the badgers always have all of it.
Folk told us that, and the badgers have never bothered us. They have their routes and we are lucky not to be on the feeding path I think. It is worth trying. Ours are grown in an enclosure of fleece, to confuse the rabbits who eat what they can see, and I dont know if that helps with the badgers. The sweetcorn like the protection when young too.
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We have been lucky on our plot with badgers, with not to much damage, my friend who grows at home has had big problems with badgers and it was the sweetcorn !!!!. He put up a badger electric fence a couple of years ago and has had no problems since. If you are growing on your own property it might be worth looking into as a long term solution.