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Help please... something is eating my seeds

JoolieLJoolieL Posts: 5
in Problem solving
Help please. We are trying to plant in our greenhouse for the summer but as soon as we plant, especially sunflowers and sweetcorn, something eats them.  The propagators have lids which seem undisturbed, yet there are just seed leftovers... and yesterday I moved to bigger pots on shelves, with a cover with a weight on top, and they have gone again.  It's not seedlings, it's seeds, literally the morning after I pot them and they've gone.  They are selective... not too bothered about peas or beans but love sweetcorn and sunflowers.  Do we have a little mouse? But there is no mess and the lids are still on in the morning, just little holes in the soil and no seeds. Help please!!
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  • Busy-LizzieBusy-Lizzie Posts: 24,043
    It's usually mice. Mice ate my sweetcorn seeds one year. I put down mousetraps, problem solved. If you don't want to do that then sow your seeds indoors and put the young plants in the GH.
    Dordogne and Norfolk. Clay in Dordogne, sandy in Norfolk.
  • Joyce GoldenlilyJoyce Goldenlily Posts: 2,933
    I would say the damage is definitely mice. I have to start all of my bean and pea seeds etc. in the conservatory to keep the varmints away from them.
  • The Bird LadyThe Bird Lady Posts: 225
    edited April 2023
    How frustrating and how odd that the lids are still on!!  I had a problem with mice in the greenhouse last year, they kept running off with my Begonia tubers!!  I found them with bite marks!! This year I have everything planted up in the dining room, not ideal but it does save wastage!  
  • bédébédé Posts: 3,095
    Mice will nose those lids up and squeeze underneath.  A trap might help.  Mice, I find, come in pairs.
     location: Surrey Hills, England, ex-woodland acidic sand.
    "Have nothing in your garden that you don't know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful."
  • nutcutletnutcutlet Posts: 27,445
    put some weights on the lids over night


    In the sticks near Peterborough
  • bédébédé Posts: 3,095
    An extra comment on mouse-traps.

    Whilst my house was empty, I set a trap in the kitchen.  I caught a blue tit.  I have since tried "humane" traps.  They are not humane!  There is a disposal problem.  The traps have a short life as the mice gnaw the perspex parts of the trap.

    I now only set coventional spring traps in the greenhouse, and cover them to deter birds.  That seems to have worked.
     location: Surrey Hills, England, ex-woodland acidic sand.
    "Have nothing in your garden that you don't know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful."
  • raisingirlraisingirl Posts: 7,093
    edited April 2023
    Sweetcorn and sunflowers - yep, mice. Peas would go the same way, I expect. The weight on the lid isn't working because those lids are bendy enough they can push them out enough for teeny mouse sized gap. If you can get more rigid trays and lids, that would probably be better, or, failing that, you might need to make a chicken wire 'wrap' right round the lids so they can't get under the edge. Or put the trays on a shelf on a bracket so the mice can't climb up - greenhouse staging or something similar.

    PS - humane mouse trap; deep bucket with a cardboard tube balanced on the edge and a blob of peanut butter at the end of the tube. Mouse goes into the tube to get the peanut butter and the extra weight tips the tube and mouse into the bucket. Mouse then spends the night eating peanut butter and working out how to prop the tube against the bucket side so he can climb out. Only catches one mouse at a time and you're left with a mouse in need of rehoming, which is tricky. It's simpler to make the seeds harder to reach
    Gardening on the edge of Exmoor, in Devon

    “It's still magic even if you know how it's done.” 
  • JoolieLJoolieL Posts: 5
    Thank you all so much for your comments. I wasn't sure what I'd do if I found a mouse, dead or alive, so I invested in some much more robust propagators with lids and we have green shoots now 😀
  • DovefromaboveDovefromabove Posts: 88,147
    edited April 2023
    @raisingirl hope you don’t mind but I’ve cut and pasted your humane trap instructions onto the cookery forum I’m a member of, where there’s been a lot of discussion about troublesome house mice just recently. 😆 

    Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.





  • raisingirlraisingirl Posts: 7,093
    Of course - I don't have a patent  :)
    Gardening on the edge of Exmoor, in Devon

    “It's still magic even if you know how it's done.” 
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