With the temperature sitting at almost 40°C it was imperative that we protected our summer vegetables from the scorching heat. All our veggie beds are raised and covered with wire cages, so it's relatively easy to cover them with the shade cloth that we have used for a few years now. It's a bit of an act the first time in the season, but after that we just roll them up and down as necessary. There are 8 beds all filled with growing food.....which as usual, the rats have now discovered. The cages keep out the possums and birds, but not the rats unfortunately and they have found the not-yet-ripe tomatoes. Not content with just eating a couple of them, the rats take a bite out of each tomato which then begins to go mouldy at the bite site. Read expletives here..........................!
3 comments:
Same expletives here! Same problem but add in the rainbow lorikeets. And we don't have your wonderful cage and shade cloth system. Must make sure the gardener in the house has a look at this post.
Of course the lorikeets would wreck havoc in a vegetable garden. So pretty though!
The cages were a lot of work to build, but have certainly helped with the wild life problem......apart from the rats that is. We used Eco wood, which was a mistake as a lot of the wood is rotting and we will have to decided whether to rebuild or just let it slowly fall apart and hope we go before it all does!
We used to have problems with rats but then a Great Owl moved in - not such a problem anymore (fingers crossed). We actually don't have many apples left as the lorikeets ate all the flowers this year, most unusual. We also think they are pretty, so haven't stressed too much about the lack of apples.
We always know when the plums are almost ready, the rats and possums come and test them, then they are gone!
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