Page 13 - Simply Vegetables Spring 2024

Mice or vole damage to January King cabbage
Microtus agrestis. Note the short tail.
Mice or vole damage to Maximus Brussel sprouts.
One disc in position and two discs already back filled. 024
Paper plate and lino discs. 022
gardening being what it is there’s always something over-looked. The Achilles heel of the raised bed is that it was filled with literally tons of light topsoil to grow roots in. This makes it easy work for the mole, especially as I continually irrigate. It was some time before I noticed damage to the second planting of Dutchman cabbage, it looked like pigeon damage, but they were covered, I concluded the hen pheasants were getting in through the open ends. Then at the other end of the raised bed large leaves started to disappear off the purple sprouting broccoli and a January King cabbage had the heart completely eaten away, then the penny dropped – voles, I’ve had them before; where moles tunnel, mice, voles and shrews very quickly follow, and others, I know a guy who caught a weasel in a mole trap. There is more happening beneath my size seven De Walt’s than I could possibly imagine. I ponder what happens when mole meets
Winter Vole & mice damage to Rouge de Bordeaux
vole in these one-way subterranean labyrinths. On the plot are two rodent proof greenhouses – I thought, in November I remember peering down at a extremely fat Field Vole (Microtus agrestis) in the Fig house, it reciprocated and we both stared each other out. I surmise it was pregnant, so there would be more in a few days, still there’s plenty of figs – well there was. The New Greenhouse is even more rodent proof. Recently I discovered that some apples, stored temporary had fresh nibbles, there’s no cover in there, so how do they get in and out?
Once the borders have been watered and dug in Spring a mole tunnels from under the adjacent raised bed turns a sharp right and tunnels under the greenhouse footings and proceeds to go up and down both borders, Mice and voles quickly follow and use these tunnels until the borders
are redug. I blocked off the footings on
the inside with chicken wire, Mr Mole (I
suppose it could be a Mrs) digs out an extra three feet and comes in under the doorway, turns right and ends up where he came in before I installed the chicken wire – you have to admire them.
I digress, this is a long way from Brussel sprouts, or is it, I see the cropping Brussel plants in the raised bed have the knobs mostly eaten up to a third of the way up the stem, the nets been taken off and the woodpigeons are devouring the tops, I’m left with what’s in the middle. To conclude, several years ago a chap called James Burke presented a BBC programme called, I believe ‘Connections’; I have just filled
in some unlikely connections between chapped hands and a pregnant field vole.
Footnote. I trapped around ten voles and mice in the brassicas and beetroot, the trapping is ongoing.
Simply Vegetables 13