Badgers versus Raised Beds

Isn’t that a handsome scene?

An orderly potager with all the crops humming along nicely. Well, a few too many romping raspberries. But the main staples are fine. Plus my bronze fennels overwintered well and are thriving.

I had planted out the basil and dill and zinnias in the edges between the tomatoes and cucumbers and courgettes.

Dahlias are in every single bed and rammed with leaf. Penstemons, roses, climbing beans in that frame.

Filled to the brim with lovely potential summer food. The deep watering has been a twice weekly event this early in the season. It’s usually only once. But heatwave, drought, yada yada yada.

But I have been doing this lark for 18 years now… pretty organised and chilled.

Busy of course, but chilled.

The potager is fenced. It has a solid chestnut stake fence all the way around the monster perimeter.

But the gates. The weak spot. They can get a bit bowed from constance use. Especially the one that leads to the lawn, pool and eventually the natural spring under the mulberry tree. Animal heaven.

But I secure them each night.

First inkling that all wasn’t well…. the Swiss chard you can see in the very bottom of this shot on the path next to the newly planted tomatoes. Gone.

Deer.

Nightly. Bless. Twice a night. Around 1030pm and then at this lovely hour around 2am. We are on their circuit.

They are leaping the fence that isn’t six feet high at the entrance on the house side of the potager. It’s a bit brazen.

But fair enough. I know this enemy. And this is a time of the heatwave and drought so they are hungry.

They can eat all the Swiss chard they like. It’s not my favourite crop.

Luckily they avoid all the rest.

And with the height of the raised beds just out of reach, I never worry about them getting into the main crops.

But this year I have proof of a far more dramatic incursion.

Badgers.

Not one but two.

And these two little critters have broken me.

First up I couldn’t understand why I was losing all my newly planted seedlings in the raised beds.

The badgers were climbing up into the tall beds and digging, digging, digging.

In search of grubs which were nicely buried deep in the raised beds. The vegetables and flowers were collateral damage.

So of course I was forced to try and fence them out.

Yep. Hideous.

Very green and flappy. I can lean in and pick the few paltry basil plants not pulled out. But it’s not a pretty sight.

Everything is churned up and no fun at all. Hubris.

But we don’t stop there with the destruction.

The badgers had another plan.

Deprived of access to the grubs in the raised beds, they have now gone for the insects in the wood of the planks holding up the beds themselves.

Every. Single. Night.

More.

Keep this up you little marauders and you will be chewing the weed proof fabric and I won’t have any raised beds at all.

So after about a week of feeling Really Sorry for myself I decided I had to try and sort out the gates.

I have added an extra wire grill at the base of the gates. Well secured.

For now I think that is the only place where they get in.

So we have stalemate.

Luckily they are going after the grubs and insects in dead wood elsewhere on the farm and in the forest.

I have put the camera up at the end of the swimming pool area where I can see they are grubbing out some roots from an ash tree.

It’s my favourite cinema on the night vision camera… As long as they don’t come for what’s left of the vegetable beds.

Little buggers.