Kitchen Garden Forum

Managed to get a long session in at the allotment yesterday after missing out on quality time with my plants last weekend cos I had a mini Lupus flare....ended abruptly when I put my hand in a red ants nest and getting a particularly vicious little b****r stuck in my glove.

On the plus side - I did get rather excited that some of my broadbeans have flowers on them. Carrots put in an appearance, spuds are flourishing and newley planted asparagus crowns are popping up. Looks like the long dormant period is over and we can look forward to spotting new veg growth all the time. Not long till my 2yr old will be scoffing peas from the pod (and the 8 yr old whinging about us being 'obsessed' with the allotment).

Woke up today with very achy butt cheeks....whether it a result of excessive weeding or dancing round the plot with ants in my glove is yet to be determined.

Lol, and I thought gardening was supposed to be benefical to ones health .

Glad you were feeling up to a visit to your allotment. There is nothing worse than wanting/needing to get down to the veg patch/allotment (delete as applicable) and not being able to for some reason - especially if the weather is good.

I took advantage of my youngsters (8 and 5) watching Flipper, to escape down to the end of the garden to do some much needed weeding. I seem to be constantly pulling sycamore seedlings out of my beds at the moment and I'm talking hundreds if not thousands of the things.

Lifted the netting on the carrot beds to find that all but one of my newly emerged carrots has been got at by slugs!!!! Some of the onions that are in with them have been nibbled too and several parsnips in the bed next door have also been chewed! I am not amused

Have sown some more carrots, a few extra parsnips (guaranteed to have far too many now) and have sprinkled a liberal amount of pellets around to prevent the remaining onions and parsnips from being munched as well.

Will no doubt feel my muscles tomorrow.

VPM
x

Hi VPM...don't go too daft with the slug pellets. In my experience, they attract the slime brigade and they come in from miles around. I sprinkle very sparingly nowadays...less is more.

We did have success with a beer can with an inch of beer in the bottom, sunk into the soil. The next day, it was absolutely full of slugs with a couple of them queueing up to get in! No exaggeration!
Cheers.

Elaine wrote:Hi VPM...don't go too daft with the slug pellets. In my experience, they attract the slime brigade and they come in from miles around. I sprinkle very sparingly nowadays...less is more.

We did have success with a beer can with an inch of beer in the bottom, sunk into the soil. The next day, it was absolutely full of slugs with a couple of them queueing up to get in! No exaggeration!
Cheers.

Lol, thanks for that. Will definitely give it a go. That's interesting about the slug pellets. I don't tend to use them that often as Mrs Blackbird usually sorts the slugs out for us but she can't get under the netting.

VPM
x

tell me about sycamore saplings...our garden is covered too.

Slugs not appeared yet but a neighboring plot at the lottie has tadpoles so hoping they munch on them. Its the flipping bunnies who have scoffed all my brassicas bar 1....makes me wonder whats wrong with it