Jenny Ball’s secure fencing protecting her sweetcorn.
GARDENINGIT WOULD seem that lovable Mr Brock is more of a controversial garden character than I might have imagined.
Love badger or hate him — or indeed both — the experience of Colin Attrill losing his sweetcorn crop to the powerful scavenger, which eats more or less whatever it gets its claws on, has generated much comment and advice since my previous piece.
And poor Colin had not reckoned on being painted a villain for wanting to protect his crop and sought an economic way of doing so — not wanting to spend hundreds of pounds on an electric fence in the process.
Colin does much out at Havenstreet for wildlife but there are limits. Sometimes nature has to be kept out.
There have been a couple of badger prevention images that made me chuckle into my pain-relieving pint that I could hardly lift.
I’d been stricken over the bank holiday weekend by some elbow tendon infection called bursitis that caused my right elbow to balloon and prevented me from doing almost everything without a wince.
Even writing this makes me grimace but an anonymous contributor made me laugh at the pain.
Her other half has two cheap and — she says — highly effective methods.
One is the preserve of the male of the household and it involves scent marking, preferably after the pub or for the teetotallers after a good few cuppas.
The second involves scent too.
Creosote has since been banned but its environmentally friendlier Creocote should also work.
Stakes, with rag wrapped around the top, and soaked in the pungent smelling stuff are said to warn off badgers.
Eighty-two-year-old Bob Welch, from Westhill Drive, Shanklin, had given in to badgers clawing up his lawn until he was told of a method of prevention.
No one knows why it works but a ring of stakes with polythene flags made from bin liners — like those of a golf course — achieved effective results.
The fluttering flags warned off the badgers and caused him a bit of a laugh in the process.
Soon after he had put them up he was told there was, indeed, a visitor to his garden.
Thinking Mr Brock had come back Bob went to have a look — and discovered a chum from down the road, putter in hand, having a game of crazy 'golf’ on his lawn.
Rosemary Pears tells me the 'Scatsergun’ approach works.
"We saved a crop of grapes from a determined badger with a deterrent water cannon from Scats.
"It takes a bit of setting up from a tap and strong hose connections, but it worked for us.
"When the animal — above cat size — breaks an electronic beam given out by an integral battery, it delivers a sudden powerful sideways back-and-forth swipe of water that is nearly strong enough to take you off your feet if you accidentally walk through it!
"I have seen another one advertised in a catalogue somewhere, but Scats’ one worked on our badgers!"
Joan Esmonde Johnson tells me of a solution that would need the co-operation of the IW Zoo. No, not a tiger but a tiger tale.
"My son’s carrot bed in Bedfordshire was dug-up and eaten overnight," she says.
"He, like Colin, sought an answer, and it came from the local Whipsnade Zoo.
"His second carrot crop survived, thanks to piles of big cat manure purchased, at a price."
I suggest you don’t collect your own, Colin.
Jenny Ball and her husband are troubled despite being just 800 metres from the heart of Newport and they managed to fence out the striped menace but it does need to be a very secure structure.
If badgers are hungry and get an idea into their heads they take some deterring and, being creatures of habit, once they succeed, they will try, try and try again to repeat that success.
l A wide range of practical solutions are included in a leaflet sent to me by the IW Badger Group, which is a member of the Badger Trust which produced it.
Julian Tisdale forwarded me a copy that I will happily e-mail out to those who are interested.
If you would like to get in touch on all things gardening e-mail me at richryde@tiscali.co.uk
My apologies if I cannot respond to every one.