20 years we have lived with three sets of Badgers near by. Seen them occasionally in the garden. only had a little damage until now. They have trashed one end of the garden and eaten hundreds of Tulip bulbs and destroyed all sorts of herbaceous plants by digging. Try as we might we cannot find where they are getting into the garden. There should be about 500 Tulips in that area.
Your poor garden!! I can only hope that now they've scoffed all your tulips they decide to move on elsewhere. As long as they don't dig up even more of your bulbs or destroy other planted areas.
Oh dear! how disheartening. I am not terrible fond of destructive wildlife. Hopefully you will see soon. Do you have a game camera that you can set up to maybe catch them in the process. beg or borrow from a friend..
Mate--it is time to invest in a couple of those camera's that you can strap to a tree or a post or something to take pics at night. You know, the ones that take moving or still pics when there is movement. That is just awful....what they did to your garden. I lost more than 200 tulip and crocus bulbs last year. In the fall, I replaced all the bulbs and then spread some very fine-meshed wire gauze over the plot where they were. It was a lot of work, but it paid off and I lost no bulbs and had a great display. Let me know what you will do about the badgers...and if you will try and film them at night.
No one has a camera. No damage last night so perhaps (bows to Hubris) we have found where they are getting in and blocked it off. We have wire netting to put in, but my wife is not well so it will have to wait until she is fit enough to help.
Oh dear Palustris, what a mess! It is so frustrating when wild life just helps themselves! I hope you have found the hole in the fence & rectified the problem. Sorry also to hear your wife is ill. Please tell her we at GS wish her well. PS: I have had good luck with a variety of methods for deterring deer: double fencing, dried blood, predator eyes (a solar powered gizmo that emits two blinking red lights at night), human hair, dog urine, coyote urine, bars of soap, Deer Away, ScareCrow (a motion detection device that emits a blast of water...you hook it up to your hose & it is powered by 2 ? C batteries). I could go on but I have probably already lost you in boredom. Good luck with your Battle of the Badger.
What a sorry sight! I do hope you've managed to block their access now. Best wishes for your wife's recovery.
No damage for the last 2 nights. According to a wild life expert, they follow scent trails, so if you can block the scent for a while they go elsewhere. So I poured a few buckets of grey water from the septic tank on to the obvious paths. We shall see if that is enough. Still raining here so no wire putting up for today. Wife has pulled a muscle in her shoulder so it is going to take a while to heal. Thanks.
So glad to hear that there's been no further damage from the badgers. Let's hope the grey water tactic has worked and they've moved on. Give your wife our best wishes and I hope she'll soon be out of pain from her pulled shoulder.
I would never thought of using gray water! I'm crossing my fingers that it continues to work for you. Those badgers really did a lot of damage to your beautiful garden.
No damage again last night. Wire fencing erection today. There are two new paths up the bank outside from the road where they look to have been investigating the rest of the boundary. With any luck this wire netting will reach those bits of the original fence. If not then off to the D.I.Y. shop for more. Heck of a difference in price of the netting too. Same stuff, same maker, same everything twice the price at the Farm outlet as at cheapo B&M.
HA! Maybe you will foil them! BTW Palustris, I don't believe I have ever seen a badger. I understand they are nocturnal.
Strangely, despite there being the three setts within a mile of us, we have only seen them twice alive, in 20 years and only 3 dead ones on the road. They are indeed nocturnal and we rarely go out after dark so.......... There is plenty of evidence of them in the fields and along our lane. They do dig rather large holes looking for food and their latrines are very, very obvious. Netting is up, we will see if it continues to work and then if need be, extend it further along the boundary. The hedge in the next section is Berberis and is still in flower, so we did not want to cut it back, just yet.
