Local birds having been hanging out in my veg beds driving me nutty. They love pea-straw, for nesting and munching the peas before they sprout. Even good quality pea-straw has pea seeds. I wouldn’t mind but they scratch through to to bare earth and then weeds and kikuyu take hold. They can also damage anything freshly planted.

I wondered if it was worth trying sugar cane mulch and found a few stories of similar bird woe, including this blogger in Sydney
who had the same bird-loving pea-straw problem and had success with using sugar cane mulch! Sounded like it was worth a try!

I’ve mulched most of the bed this morning with organic sugar cane mulch and I’m hopeful that the pigeons and blackbirds will leave it alone.

I quite like sugar cane mulch. It smells sickly sweet, and tucks up the plants nicely. Compared to pea-straw (which I sometimes get by the bale) it’s quite fine so with our gusty breezes I’ll have to keep it damp and it’s also a bit more expensive than pea-straw.

I am so in love with my little food forest. It’s not perfect and lessons are being learned, which is what gardening is all about – growing yourself a bit too.

We’re getting radishes, snow-peas and the first wee green tomatoes, tiny lemons…it’s all happening!!!

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