This season I’ve been a bit slow off the mark fencing in new seedlings, and whilst I’m aware something’s been eating outside lettuce leaves, (annoying though it is), if its only the outside leaves, I can live with it. I assumed it was a rabbit or possum; but last week, a kind garden visitor suggested to me that it was a bower bird! Now earlier in the year, I thought I saw a bird pecking at my lettuce and dismissed it out of hand….since when do birds eat leaves? I thought I must have got it wrong. But my visitor told me that bower birds also eat the tips of newly sprouted peas. Well….that was it. They’re the two things being attacked in the garden: so bower birds it must be!
What to do? Get defences set up…and fast!
Last weekend saw the completion of espalier pruning, so I had lots of twigs at hand. While pointless trying to protect the mature lettuces (we’re munching our way through those quite fast!), the new seedlings now have a better chance of keeping their outside leaves.
Never a dull moment that’s for sure! And I do love having garden visitors….there’s always such an exchange of useful information!