ANOTHER mixed weather week means I was unable to get to work in the vegetable garden. I was hoping to sow some early peas and broad beans directly, though the soil was far too wet to work with. So, I took the opportunity so sow some peas and beans into celled trays and placed these in my cold frame, which means that I can later plant them directly into the garden when the weather conditions have improved.

However, whilst I was hoping to sow some seeds, I was disappointed to find that several of my brassicas had been damaged, well, most of the leaves had been eaten away, and from some established plants as well as several young plants.

So, what’s causing the damage? It has been far too cold for slugs and snails, and for any other brassica insect pest. A big clue is that this peat had left quite a lot of droppings behind! You may have guessed, it’s rabbits!

Despite fencing off my vegetable garden, rabbits have managed to gain access and enjoying my greens. It was rather surprising to see how much damage they have done, and despite the vegetable garden containing a range of vegetables, it was the brassicas that they have focused on, to the extent that I don’t think I will be having a good spring greens harvest this year.

I’m not one for shooting them or setting traps of any kind, or using ferrets! So, I checked and reinforced, where I could, the existing rabbit proof fencing, though I could find little evidence as to where they maybe gaining access. I have also provided some additional secondary fencing around my individual brassica crops with the hopes this will help. I have also installed a couple of ultrasonic rabbit repellent devices which are battery solar powered. It’s the first time I have used these devices, though they did have a good review.

They work by emitting a high pitch noise when the sensor picks up the passing rabbit, and this noise, although cannot be heard by humans, is at such a pitch that it scares rabbits away. I will let you know if these have been successful in the near future.

Another approach I took, was to apply a dressing of bone meal across the vegetable gardens, this is an organic fertiliser and one which rabbits do not like the smell of, so in addition to deterring the rabbits, a dressing of bone meal will also help to feed the crops.

Of course, rabbits don’t just eat vegetables, they also like to munch on garden plants and it can be difficult rabbit proofing the whole garden. There are however, some plants which rabbits won’t eat and in my flower garden, one such plant is my Lenten Roses (hellebores), actually they are flowering very well this year, as you can see from my photograph this week which shows some of the colours and forms they take.

I have talked about Lenten roses before and they are one of my favourite plants, they are not too difficult to grow, and do provide a lot of colour from this time of the year up to and including Easter.

It’s a plant that can be sulky, in that it hates any root disturbance, which means when you plant an hellebore it needs to be in its final position.

When they become fully established they will make a large crown which you can lift and split for replanting around the garden, however it may be a couple of seasons or so before any blooms.

When newly planted it is a deciduous plant, which means it loses its leaves over the winter, however, when it becomes established the leaves become evergreen, keeping its leaves over the winter.

In this case, it is better to cut the leaf growth back to ground level in late October., for both the Lenten and Christmas roses, as come the early spring the plant throws up flowering spikes followed by leaf growth, this way you will see more of the flowers, if you leave the leaf growth then much of the display will be hidden. Interestingly, the flowers which you can see on my photograph are not flowers in the truest sense, they are in fact modified leaves which look like flower petals.