Hedgehogs eating the snails and berries from my allotment

Are you sick of hedgehog updates yet?

We’ve been seeing the hedgehogs a lot. Last night we saw one of them clambering up the compost heap.

Then this morning I saw one eating and drinking from the food bowl I put out.

That green house is the Hogilo which you can buy from the British Hedgehog Preservation Society.

None of our hedgehogs use the houses we bought and today I discovered the hiding place of one of them. Just beside the Hogilo is a big holly bush and I saw the hedgehog disappear beneath a pile of leaves under the holly. This is surely a great excuse to have a messy and unkempt garden.

There’s no sign of him at all.

Holly is a native shrub that’s often used by hedgehogs and small mammals for hibernation while the flowers and fruits provide food for insects and birds. If you want hedgehogs my recommendation is to plant some holly rather than buy a hedgehog house. It also makes nice Christmas decorations in December. It has lovely dark green glossy leaves all year round.

This afternoon at around 3:30pm I saw a hedgehog again. I’m not sure if I should be worried as hedgehogs are meant to sleep during the day. But this one was foraging in the hostas eating snails. I saw it pull a snail from a rock then I heard crunch, crunch, crunch. I’m quite delighted because the hostas are riddled with snails and they’ve decimated the leaves as you can see in this next photo. You can just make out the spines of a hedgehog in the centre of the photo if you look closely.

I’m not sure which one it is but I left him in peace. I hope he continues to munch up the snails.

I haven’t mentioned my allotment much this year and that’s because I haven’t spent much time there. A volunteer has been working it as I needed a break and the volunteer is on a waiting list for their own plot and wanted somewhere to grow stuff in the meantime. She’s done a terrific job and my plot has gone from the worst to the best. I’m still growing some kale and leeks plus I have all my berries but she’s working the rest of it. I visited today to pick some berries and there are more blueberries than I’ve ever had. Plus raspberries, gooseberries and strawberries. The blueberries are just from one bush with all my other bushes full of fruit that’s not quite ripe yet.

It even looks like the tree I’ve been wondering about ever since I took on the plot has revealed itself to be a pear tree. This is the very first fruit I’ve seen. I guess it takes several years before they start to fruit and the person who had my plot before me planted this so I never knew what it was.