Gardening Tips

Tags

slugs, wellies

A vase of Viola cornuta rescued from the garden tidy up this weekend.

I can’t be the only untidy, slightly disorganised and clumsy gardener out there, can I? Here are just a few musings and tips you probably won’t read in a gardening book.

Occasionally, I end up at the plot with no receptacle in which to put the few raspberries I’ve spotted. I recommend not putting them in your coat pocket thinking they’ll be ok until you get home. Firstly, if you’re like me, you’ll forget and only realise once you’ve squished them or secondly, you’ll forget completely, only to discover them, several weeks later, as you produce your purse at the shop as a mouldy mess congealed in the bottom of your pocket.

I’ve discovered it’s not a good idea to put on your wellies on a hot day without any socks. The combination of hot rubber and sweaty feet creates a strange sticking action which makes it nearly impossible to remove them. Cue hopping about, straining and yanking until they finally come off with a squelching noise and the feeling that you’ve left behind a layer of skin.

Rose ‘Shropshire Lad’

Never pick up a slug with bare hands. Their slime has powers of stickiness, as yet, untapped by science. You’ll wash your hands and think they’re clean but, oh no, that goo has staying power.

Don’t forget to open your cold frame on a hot and sunny day when your shallots are drying inside it. I did, last summer, and the onion aroma that greeted me at the front door was the smell of my shallots, literally, cooking under the glass.

Standing on a rake doesn’t just happen in comic strips and silent movies. And yes, it does hurt. Particularly if you’re the same height as the rake and it smacks you right on the face.

Don’t call in at the allotment on the way back from somewhere, in smart clothes, thinking, ‘I’ll just pick something up for tea’. You won’t. There’ll be the weeds you spot that need pulling out, sweet peas that need tying in and before you know it you’re covered in mud and are those blackberry stains on your sleeve?

Heleniums bringing a touch of heat to the garden

The time you think you’ll spend on the plot, at any given time, is always a massive under-estimation of the time you’ll actually spend there. I either need to become more disciplined or adjust other commitments accordingly, so that people aren’t greeted by a slightly frazzled, dishevelled and soil encrusted individual shoving a basket of vegetables at them as I disappear off, desperate for the loo.

No matter how well I plan for a visit to the plot, with lists and post-it notes I will always forget to take something vital with me. With no shed for storage there, I increasingly look like a pack mule with my bucket for cut flowers, my trug for vegetables and a collection of containers for the harvest of various soft fruits. A bag with suncream, sun hat, raincoat, hat, scarf (delete depending on weather), tissues, my mobile, gardening gloves and the various tools such as trowel, snips, plant labels, pencil and twine that I don’t leave up there. Add in a camera for some quick shots and the liquid seaweed, possibly some fleece or netting. Well you get the picture.

Maybe it’s just me. I do hope not.

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The Usual Suspects

Tags

hostas, lamiums, organic slug pellets, salvias, slugs, snails

The Usual Suspects

I don’t like to give in or be defeated by things but I think when it comes to slugs and snails, for this year anyway, I have. There was a time when I would patrol my garden as dusk fell, torch in one hand and trowel in another collecting these slimy creatures. With a bucket of salty water at the ready, they would be disposed of and I would go to bed feeling like I was at least on top of the problem. A sprinkling of organic slug pellets or water bottles, cut down to create a collar-like protection around particularly vulnerable plants, were further weapons in my armoury.

However, this incredibly wet summer has provided such perfect conditions for slugs and snails that it’s proved impossible to control them. I’ll admit my night-time forays have been few and far between, with other commitments taking up so much time. And if I’m honest the prospect of donning full waterproofs to go out and search for slugs in the pouring rain is not the most appealing way of spending my time. I’ve tried beer traps in the past but the disgusting gloop that results is difficult to get rid of. Where do you put a mixture of drowned slugs, slime and cheap lager?

Shredded hostas

Even organic slug pellets which have proved useful in the past don’t seem to be working this year. I have a plastic trough that I grow salad leaves in and I’ve had to resow it threes times now. I’ve even tried planting into it more established little lettuce plants but this didn’t even work. I came out one day to find a slug, in broad daylight no less, manoeuvring its way through the compost, avoiding the slug pellets and hoovering up the lettuce. Seriously these creatures have no shame.

A slimy trail

My hostas are taking on a shredded look, lamiums have been reduced to shreds and a salvia is now nothing more than a stump. I have plants that a slug or snail, the actual culprit is unclear, has crawled over the leaves at the base, up the stem and then eaten the much anticipated flower. Why, why, why?

It’s not like I want to completely eradicate these detritivores. I appreciate their place in the chain of organisms that breaks down plant material but what I don’t understand is, give a slug the choice between some rotting leaves and some lettuce seedlings and it will choose the latter. Maybe it’s the same as giving me the choice between service station sandwiches and a gourmet meal in a restaurant. My lettuce must just be too tasty to slither past. But surely my lamiums and salvias aren’t that much more appealing than a pile of decaying leaf litter. Maybe I just have to accept that there are some plants that I just shouldn’t grow.

Where’s the salad gone?

There was a time when I was pretty squeamish about disposing of slugs but the sense of frustration I feel when I come across plants that have been damaged when I’ve spent so much time nurturing them has led to a more ‘seek and destroy’ mentality. So much so, that scissors or squishing with a welly are now employed. I have more of a problem with snails though, partly because scissors aren’t going to work with that shell and also more because they look like a living creature rather than slugs, which just look like a blob of slime. Writing this though still makes me feel slightly guilty. I don’t like destroying life but when it is estimated that there are up to 1000 slugs per square metre in parts of Britain this summer because of the mild winter and wet summer, which could mean potentially 15 billion slugs in the whole of the country, I don’t feel quite so bad. (figures taken from the Daily Telegraph 23rd May 2012)

In some respects it is my own fault, the overpopulation of slugs is a sign to some degree that the little ecosystem that is my garden is not functioning properly. There simply aren’t enough predators to control the mollusc population. The difference between my garden and my allotment is striking. Whilst the plants up on the plot have not survived completely unscathed they have suffered relatively little damage, birds such as song thrushes and blackbirds are doing a fine job of controlling the slugs and snails. Even though I encourage birds into the garden, prowling neighbours’ cats seem to put many of them off rummaging about in the undergrowth and a back garden entirely surrounded by fences makes access for hedgehogs difficult. I did come across a frog today though sitting under some grasses by the newly installed pond. I don’t think one frog is going to solve my slimy problem though, so for now, I can only hope that at some point soon it will stop raining, the ground will dry up and the slugs will go into hiding for a while.

Collapsing Cloches and Pest Hunt

Tags

broad beans, cloche, pea and bean weevil, RHS, slugs, successional sowing

Pea and Bean Weevil Attack

There are days when I wonder why I spend time growing my own fruit and veg. The sort of day when I think, ‘you know Wellywoman you could just buy this from the supermarket or pick it up at the farmers’ market at the weekend’. That happened on Wednesday when, after a night of strong winds and torrential rain, I went up to the plot to check everything was OK. The cloche I’d constructed over some lettuce seedlings to protect them from the cold, frosty nights we’ve been having had collapsed under the weight of the rain. Fortunately most of plants had survived. The ones that hadn’t had been got by slugs.

Our slimy mollusc foe isn’t the only pest that has already started the onslaught on the vegetation growing on my plot. My broad beans which were lovingly nurtured at home before being planted out have been chomped and my peas, which were likewise started off at home, have been nothing short of mauled. I had just assumed it was either birds or mice attacking the peas and beans. These are generally the prime culprits and a quick check of my RHS Encyclopaedia seemed to confirm my suspicions. There was little I could do about mice but I constructed a barrier out of chicken wire in the hope that this would keep off the birds. Regular inspections though showed both peas and beans were still being attacked.

After some research online Wellyman, convinced it couldn’t be mice unless they had acquired the ability and equipment to dangle Tom Cruise like in Mission Impossible, came across the true culprit, pea and bean weevil. A pest that doesn’t even get a mention in my RHS Encyclopaedia, it chews distinctive u-shaped notches into the edges of leaves. Brown and grey in colour and about 5mm long they overwinter in plant debris and vegetation before moving on to plants to feed in spring. Growing green manures overwinter doesn’t seem such a great idea now but my plot is surrounded by grass paths so even without the phaecelia the weevils would have had somewhere to hide.

My forlorn looking peas

The adults are normally not active until May but in milder springs can appear earlier. It gets worse, the adults come out at night so no chance of catching them and there is no other organic control I have come across, other than growing plants until they are a good size before planting out, which is what I ‘d thought I’d done!! My problems were probably exacerbated by the cold spell just after I’d planted them out, whilst the peas and beans sulked the weevil tucked in for dinner.

It’s only April and my great plans for successional sowing are down the pan already. Some of the peas appear to be growing ok but others aren’t going to recover, so now I’m left with patchy rows. This is my first year growing peas and broad beans and I’m beginning to wonder if it was such a wise move. Others on the allotment have been affected too, but some of the older plot holders soak their seed in Jeyes Fluid so that the mice don’t eat the seed and I’m wondering whether this is also why their seedlings haven’t been nibbled nearly so much as mine. I don’t plan on resorting to Jeyes Fluid, a quick look online and it seems fairly toxic stuff, being suggested as a way to get rid of moles to being diluted and used as a weed killer. Doesn’t sound like the sort of thing I want near something I’d eat.

I have got other batches of peas growing in the cold frames which were meant to be my second crop, so my plan is just to start again. I might try and keep the new plants at home a little bit longer this time, hopefully by the time they’re sturdy plants it will have warmed up. If not, I’ve suggested to Wellyman we start look at properties in southern France. I don’t mind changing my moniker to Sandalwoman if it means my plants actually grow.

Is anyone else experiencing early season growing pains? Please share your woes to make me feel better.