WAR!

My twitter friend @EmmmaB (of the famous gardening school in Bath) asked me once to tell a little about the TRIALS and TRIBULATIONS I face farming flowers.


Well, aside from the constant interruptions of growing two small children and making occasional efforts to keep alive a grumpy husband those trials, I can tell you, are legion. 

And this year the foot soldiers of my enemies (mice, voles, shrews, moles) have been joined by the artilery/riflemen (multitaskers): THE RABBITS!

You'd have thought they'd stay indoors when there's a foot of snow about

Now what they don't tell you when they lecture you about the benefits of making piles of horticultural rubbish about your garden (some call them compost heaps) is that as well as the hedgehogs who are to be encouraged to move in on account of their love of slug pie for tea, they provide the PERFECT environment for the rabbit warren.  Warm - nay, hot even - dry, easily burrowable through, our compost heaps have become massive rabbit barracks.

This morning I found rabbit excavations IN THE POLY TUNNEL!!!! 

(How'm I doing on the capitals @ViksterBean? - Counting the exclamation marks @McJNally?)

Now the poly tunnel is home to early tulips, daffs, alliums in crates.  There are acidanthera and ALREADY SOLD white nerines potted up in there.  Not to mention the most highly productive white peach and apricot trees this side of Toulouse.  And as for the sweet peas.  I take a deep breath and try to calm my raging heart.  These are early sweet peas.  I planted them in October.  Nursed them through all that frost and snow through the whole of December and the beginning of January.  Now they are planted and individually protected by home made mouseproof cloches (plastic beer glasses with the bottoms cut out.  I water them on warm days.  I breath carbon dioxide on them every day.  I stroke them so that they shall be strong and able and GIVE GOOD FLOWER in APRIL!  And the rabbits got in and tried to UNDERMINE THEM!!!! 

BASTARDOS!

What did I do?  What did I DO??????? 

I looked in the bank account and found no money for buying chicken wire and putting up fencing. 

From this comment you might think we have no fencing.  Oh no.  We have fencing by the MILE.  Fabrizio may have planted hedge world (see earlier post for details).  But inside this is fence world.  Electric fencing.  Three strands of it.  All the way round the vegetable garden AND the polytunnel AND the greenhouse.  It is especially arranged at rabbit height and is run OFF THE MAINS! (Because we also have trouble with deer but the deer height fence around the place works.)

these are from before we went professional (ahem)

This time last year I was just a girl with two small babies who developed tv programmes, wrote novels, and always grew too many sweet peas even for the barrow we fill daily outside the house in summer.  Now I give a S**T!  And the rabbits have moved in.  And I'm DETERMINED not to get into debt getting rid of them.

So I've made the polytunnel as rabbit proof as I can for tonight.

There are mousetraps a gogo throughout tunnel and greenhouse.

I may have to go out there in a minute and just shout at them and see if that frightens them away.

So, what pests, trials, tribulations do we suffer @EmmmaB?  Well, so far this year it's only rodent/rabbit sized.  I'll post more when the seedlings start getting botritis, the wire worm starts feeding on the roots of my babies, the black fly attacks the dahlias and the aphids crowd out the roses. 

What's a rabbit's favourite lunch?  Freshly sprouting tulip top.
Mouse? Freshly sprouted sweet pea seed.

Am I worried about slugs yet?  Nooooo - have a whole winter's stock of coffee grounds, baked egg shells and a big tub of vaseline ready for them - not to mention the copper backed selotape and copper rings Fabrizio's made from old pipes.

So happy wednesday everybody.  Cheery gardening.  May your greenhouses be temperate and your poly tunnels frost free.

In the name of English grown cut flowers I'm off to do battle in the wild Common Farm night.

can you see the not very rabbit proof fence?