It's been a while since my last garden update. Sorry, and pictures to follow shortly.

Since my last entry, the potatoes and most of the broccoli have been harvested, and about half the carrots. The strawberries are all now neatly filed away in my tummy, as are the red & black currants.

The blueberry bush is still fruiting though. They don't take much space and the berries are easy to grow. As long as you net them from birds you should get a good crop. Rumour has it that if you have a couple, you get a better crop.

The second lot of spuds and my yellow tomatoes all succumbed to potato blight so the hallums have been cut down and I need to leave the spuds in the ground another few days to make sure they aren't infected. All this rain does for them at this time of year :-(

Luckily, the rain has helped the plum trees and runner beans to produce a good crop. If all goes well, I'll also get three apples off the trees I planted this spring. One red and two green, they had best be tasty after all this effort.

On the non-food front, I stuck some new fence panels in and planted black stemmed bamboo against it. It should grow to about 3m tall, so will help screen the bottom of the garden in Winter when the trees have lost their leaves.

This evening, I had a bonfire to burn the old fence panels I'd taken out, as well as some other bits and bats of pruning. As I moved the old panels, I found a full array of frogs, which is good news as they are in the area of the new pond.

I have been a bit concerned for them of late, as there's a tawny owl living in the sycamore at the moment, and they eat frogs as well as other stuff. There was a sparrowhawk in the garden as well the other day. Not only do I sound like Bill Oddie, I'm turning twitcher

Finally, I was doing a bit of weeding late on, and brushed against one of the conifers. The most odd noise came from it, which I think was a bird of some sort warning me off its territory. Or it was a bullfrog, a Tasmanian Devil or something else odd. Poking the tree with a stick shut it up, but didn't flush it into the open. More investigation required.

Copied from blogs (original entry) - post comments here.

You need to get out more! And I don't mean into the garden :-) :-)

sooooooo jealous!!!!

Send or bring me some plums down next time Trous!!!!!

wonderful to hear that you've had a bumper crop, my redcurrant bushes have been eaten by slugs, I've just been gardening today and I've never seen so many slugs in my life! Does anyone know how to get rid of them? Is the reason that there's a nearby pond or is it the weather?

It has also eaten my lillies, lupins, about 18 sunflowers as I've two surviving sunflowers now! I just don't know what is biting the plants but discovered a lot of slugs today!

Is it you slugster? or your breed?

Yorkie

The rain is great for slugs & snails.

Sluggy, look away now as I discuss the genocide of your ilk.

It depends how organic you want to be Yorkie.

The least organic method is slug pellets. They are effective, but won't do much for your other garden wildlife. Most are reasonable pet-safe, but frogs, hedgehogs and co might take a beating.

Next up are physical measures. These are only really effective against plants in pots but things like copper tape stop them in their tracks. They don't like the electrical currents set up as they cross the copper and their slime reacts with it. If you use it round plant stems or pots, bear in mind that slugs & snails can also get through the holes in the bottom of the pots ....

Other physical barriers are things like crushed sea shells and cat litter they don't like crawling over.

If you need to kill them over an area, then you might want to try one of the nematode biological controls. You get it from the garden centre as a liquid and water it onto the ground. It's full of tiny parasitic worms that are harmless to anything but the pest they are sold to combat. Natural, safe and effective.

Some folk swear by beer traps for snails and slugs. Pop a bit of stale beer in and just pick out the drowned pests. Effective but yucky.

Finally is the direct method. Find where the snails are hiding and squash them. It takes time, but is totally organic.


Hope this helps a bit.

T

PS it's probably the birds that have had your redcurrants, unless all the leaves have gone. Net them to protect the crop. Takes a few minutes and some canes, plus a bit of garden net.

Go for the slug pellets Yorkie! I checked my mint and saw there were only two leaves left on a sorry little stick! So, slug pellets down and the next morning it was carnage - 7 dead bodies to clear. The rest of the garden has now been treated and there are bodies everywhere, but at least everything is now growing and not being eaten. Quick and effective :twisted:

I have also heard salt works for killing them too

SALT lots of.......

Thanks for the tips... and I'm not using SALT coz I don't want to see slugs shrinking and oouzing - now I've got goose pimples!

I have thought about the beer traps and will probably do this or I'll get some slug pellets but haven't got the time now so I'll probably leave it for my mum to clear it up while I'm on holiday soon!

cheers

Yorkie

p.s. hardly get any birds in my garden coz of CATS!

Salt is natural as are slugs, as Nike says "just do it". Crushed egg shells as well as sea shells are good but not as good as salt

This is the nematode slug killer stuff.


nemaslug


Not cheap, but it is organic.

I love the pictures of your garden.

I have a concrete slab which pretty much sums up what you could call my yard.

I'm jealous

Its nice to know i'm not the only one getting into this grow your own! I have an apple tree which due to the weather is a little confused, Potatoes, tomatoes (Which have also developed blight so we have a large crop of green tomatoes) So its green tomato chutney galore! But the best crop so far seems to be the sweetcorn which cost me 6p a plant and are still going strong. Just cant seem to grown the corgettes !

all in all i'm very proud of myself never having grown my own veg!