Friday 26 November 2010

Frost-protection or Fox-protection?

I have been trying to keep the salad season going a bit longer by protecting a couple of my raised beds with horticultural fleece, but the local Fox population seems to consider this unsporting. Presumably it restricts their ability to root around in my beds to find worms to eat... Today there were big holes in both fleece covers and I had to carry out some emergency repairs. Unfortunately I suspect that it may have been too late, because the plants inside were "crispy" with frost, and some may not survive.


Note footprints on the fleece at bottom left of picture

The other day I planted some miniature daffodil bulbs in some pots, but the blessed Foxes dug them up the next night, so I had to re-plant them and I have now erected a Fox-barrier arrangement using the wire shelves from my mini greenhouses, kept in place with bricks -- see picture below.

The watering-cans are there to act as an additional obstacle...

Obviously, when the bulbs begin to push through the compost those bricks are going to have to go, but maybe by then the Foxes will have given up? (I live in hope...)

The Squirrels were also busy last night. The bird-feeder which hangs in the "Fish" tree was on the ground this morning, empty of course.

Scene of the crime - Exhibit 'A'

It's a battle-ground out there...!

9 comments:

  1. The little blighters! you need to set a few booby traps lol. Fed up of fox trampling across my raised beds leaving it's foot trails across them! hmmphhh...

    ReplyDelete
  2. I didn't realise fox were such a nuisance. Thought it might be a cat with a bad attitude until you pointed out the fox print. The things gardeners have to do to get a few daffodils huh!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Interesting. We have foxes here but I have never seen one anywhere near the house. Maybe the scent of my dogs keep them away? Never had them bother the daffodil bulbs either. We have lots of squirrels but I never feed the birds.

    ReplyDelete
  4. I share your pain. I'm battling against what I think are cats in my garden, and am planning defences similar to yours at the weekend. I'm not really at home in daylight hours during the week.

    ReplyDelete
  5. In the Aussie vernacular, "Bugger!"

    ReplyDelete
  6. it's a good job you haven't got any chickens with all those foxes about.

    ReplyDelete
  7. So many little visitors! I hope your garden survives them. too bad about the vegetables tho.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Foxes are so common in your place? In Japan wild foxes are seen only in deep forests or mountainous areas in the northern part of Japan. There are some news of wild animals like deer, bears and foxes which eat vegetables in farms preparing for hibernation in Japan.

    ReplyDelete
  9. In England, many foxes have moved from the countryside to the urban areas, where they thrive on domestic scraps stolen from dustbins -- and of course the discarded remnants of fast food items (partially) eaten by the late night party-goers. We see them very often in our area, in broad daylight as well as after dark. Last week a very well-fed fox trotted across our road just as I was entering our driveway. He'd probably been having a go at digging up my parsnips!

    ReplyDelete

Thank you for taking time to leave me a comment! Please note that Comment Moderation is enabled for older posts.