Last year I planted a packet of peas in the ground. A month later not one had survived. Mice had dug them all up.
I love fresh garden peas, so worked out a way to stop the mice getting to them. I know I can grow peas in pots and then transplant them, but a hundred pots is a pain.
I came up with the idea of using a window box trough. This has an overhanging lip, so mice cannot climb into it. I make sure the trough is away from any mouse climbing aids, too.
It is a simple matter of half filling the window box with compost, scattering the peas over it and then adding another two inches of compost to cover the seeds. Tamp the compost down and water.
In a week your pea seeds will have sprouted. Three weeks from planting you will be able to plant your pea seedlings in the ground.
Use your hand to extract a few seedlings and tease the roots apart. Just make a small hole with a dibber or small trowel, put one seedling in each hole and fill the hole with soil. Make your planting holes about six inches apart and your pea plants will grow up and support each other.
This year I did not lose one pea plant to the mice. I have never read any advice anywhere that suggests that pea plants can be transplanted but it works. I planted my peas in early March. I will plant another packet before the end of May to give me a succession of pea pods into autumn.
As in previous years I pot grow my peas then plant out when 3 to 4 inches high. This year I have tried on 3 separate occasions to plant them in my veg garden, within two days they are destroyed. I scatter slug pellets around them( much against my better judgement) and completely enclose them in netting, all to no avail, If anyone has any ideas as how to prevent mice from destroying my 4th. and last attempt I would be very grateful.
I have lost a lot of tall peas to slugs and later, rabbits. I am saving wood ashes from the fireplace to scatter around them next year. Normally I just throw the ashes onto the compost heap, but I think the slightly alkaline nature of the wood ash will put off slugs.
Besides that I think the only answer is to keep ducks. It’s an old Yorkshire saying “If you have too many slugs then you need more ducks”
It’s the rabbits that get me!!!