Those pesky pests!


As I am writing this blog to catch up with a month’s worth of progress, I should be looking back for inspiration, but first I need to cover a serious and imminent threat to our wellbeing.




Slugs and snails!  (here’s one from Ian’s conservatory)


It’s been dry for weeks, and they’ve all been holed up under plant pots and sheds getting hungrier and hungrier and meaner and meaner. So now it’s dull and wet they will be heading out to investigate whatever tender seedlings you have put out to grow and do their worse.


And they are doing it in broad daylight, so get out there, collect them up (wear a rubber glove), and dispose of them according to your conscience! The ducks on the local pond will welcome a change from all the sliced bread getting chucked at them at the moment, and chickens will gobble them up too. A bucket of salt water works, then dump them on the compost heap, or if you are feeling kinder take them for a walk a mile or so down the road and release them somewhere green. Apparently it isn’t a great idea to try to flush them down the loo…


A good tip for all pests is to give them exactly what they want, and they won’t need to make a beeline for your plants. Save up all your old lettuce, fruit and vegetable peelings, and place piles of them under tubs or buckets, or use beer traps or wholemeal bran under tiles, and you can gather up dozens of the slimy beggars. (Your neighbours might wonder why you’re searching around the garden last thing at night with a torch). Place traps near the untidy corners or piles of old bricks around the garden, and they won’t go past them to eat your veg.

You only need to do this to get your precious seedlings through wet spells in the spring, once they have got their roots down and started growing and toughening up all you will get is a few holes in the lower leaves.







Ok, I was looking for an early pic of the project, but found instead this sunset from the day before all our lives were turned upside down to remind us that although we need the rain the sun will soon return!

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