badgers
gatehouse
Posts: 5
i am lucky enough to have at least one badger coming in to my garden after dusk.
However it enjoys sumo wrestling with my onions before demolishing my carrots.
can anyone advise me how to persuade them to leave my veg plot alone?
i did read in the latest GW magazine about curry powder may help.
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Posts
They love peanut butter
put some where you want them to go and they should leave your veg alone,I don,t encourage badgers as they dig up patches of lawn and generally make a big mess of the garden,I would rather see them in the wild.
thanks
Ensure you do not feed it or it will come back over and over again. They are very destructive, with the strength of a mini-bulldozer.
I actually HAD a 'pet' badger many years ago, in Devon. It took ALL my ingenuity to sow broad beans and peas without the wee darling digging them up with unnatural precision, leaving neat holes in neat rows every night. Eventually, I tried a quick seed spray of paraffin, to deter her from excavations. It seemed to work, as we had a decent crop of beans and peas, eventually. I found the delight in being friends with this wild creature far outweighed the trouble in the garden. Even now, some 40+ years on, I still miss her dreadfully. One hasn't lived until you have been 'groomed' by a warm and playful badger !
we have recently had several small holes appearing in the lawn overnight, My daughter woke us all up at 4am yesterday morning to tell us that there was a badger in the garden. Mystery solved, but what to do about the holes
Nothing to do about the holes I'm afraid. We have an entire family of badgers visiting nightly in our garden. We HAVE to feed them otherwise they become very destructive indeed. Largely it works although they do have a go at redesigning the lawn on occasion. Its a tricky one. I'd sooner not feed them and have them just forage for their own but they clearly consider our garden part of their territory so they'll just keep coming back and I'd rather keep damage to a minimum (so far they've left all of my plants and veg alone). So I think unfortunately its a case of feed them in the hope that it deters them or go round and fill the holes back in. Neither of them an ideal solution I'm afraid tiptonnic
What make you think that feeding them would DETER them? Would you be deterred if someone gave you free food?
Look to your fences. It is dangerous for the badgers if they get too used to the proximity of humans. They are more likely to get killed on the road, going to and fro from your feeding station.
As to holes in the lawn - they made such a mess of our fields when we were farming - you can fill the holes in during the winter when they semi-hibernate. All ready for them to start again next year.
Gatehouse, at least you consider yourself to be lucky to have a badger. So you do see a benefit to it. They are beautiful animals and not everyone sees one, even in a lifetime, so you can enjoy them for that.
I suppose all gardening has its pros and its cons and it really depends on how much money you are prepared to spend to enjoy one and get over the other.
We used to have a badger in our garden and we loved to watch it. I also loved to grow carrots but found that the two were incompatible so, in the end, I bought my carrots at the shop, turned off the tv and we enjoyed the badger show.
I believe that the Riverford Organic veg box people put up an electric fence to keep the badgers out of their pumpkin patch, though I think that the current had to be pretty high to keep them away.
If you live near a farm supply shop maybe you could investigate a small electric fence?
Hi Welshonion, the food does deter them in the main although it isn't always successful. Unfortunately there is nothing to be done re borders or fences around our property, there aren't any at all. We do have privacy from the road on two sides as we're hemmed in by very old and very tall trees but the road runs around us (its a very quiet road used only by the people who live on it and there aren't that many but as the road goes around it dips down, its gets to 40 foot by the time you get to the front door of the house and by the time you get to the back its nearer 100, and on top of that at the back of our garden is a bank, with the near on 100 foot drop to the ground, which hems the road in with woodland etc so its free reign for any animals wanting to wander there. They come straight up the bank and straight into the garden through all of the trees!
Trouble is I've seen many badgers on the roads at night and they are hopeless at self-preservation as they snuffle along the side of the road. There is nothing worse than seeing them dead on the verge.
Please explain the dichotomy. I put out food for the birds to attract them to my garden.
I put out food for the badgers to deter them from eating/destroying my crops.
I can't make head nor tail of it!