On Mon, 29 Dec 2003 00:27:55 GMT, Jaques d'Alltrades
wrote:

The message
from MCC contains these words:
On Sun, 28 Dec 2003 22:25:08 GMT, FF wrote:

I just got back from the Xmas break and found the tiny baby cabbages
I spaced out
around a month ago have mostly been munched. Some are saveable, I
think. My guess is
the culprits are slugs or snails, but I can't find a single one!

Too cold for them in most of the UK

This is the first year I've grown cabbage and only the second year
I've grown
anything. What should I do to save what remains, please? Will a
squirt of dilute
detergent do the trick, as it did with aphids in the summer? Is it
any good to go out
there with a torch at night and hunt doen the varmints by hand?
(It's jolly cold out
there tonight!!)

Thanks for your help and advice,

Maybe pigeons?

Much more likely.

Lightbulb moment! We do have a lot of pigeons around.

Push some sticks into the ground round and amongst the cabbages and fix
black cotton to the tops, tightly connecting the sticks so that you have
a criss-cross arrangement round and over the plants.

Will do.

The pigeons will feel the cotton as they come in to land and be
frightened off.

If it's rabbits, the cotton doesn't work, but an air rifle does. (Recipe
on application.)
I have recipe, thanks:-)

Liz