Kitchen Garden Forum

Yep, the slugs are awake and munching already on our Liverpool plot - you have been warned! It seems a bit early to me but there they were, feasting on my precious young tarragon plants and leavy tiny, baby slug trails.

I've had three slug hunts this week and caught over 1,000 in three nights.

Also one had got into the greenhouse and munched its way through half a tray of spring cabbage seedlings.

Outside there were lots inside the cabbages and they were causing a lot of damage to the swiss chard.

Just thought I'd give everyone a reminder to check, not that most of you would need it! The size of some of them they could probably eat a cabbage over night.

Alas, our friendly hedgehog who has been visiting us nightly was found dead in the road a few days ago. I'm sure it was the same one because immediately after his death, we stopped seeing his little black "doolies" on the lawn every night. I'm so sad. Every evening I used to prowl the garden for big fat orange slugs and put lots of them in a pile in the middle of the lawn, where he would come and munch his way through them. Now, I'll have to resort to collect them in a jam jar and dumping them in a local footpath or putting them on the bird table where they're far too big for all the small birds to cope with.

I'm sorry to hear about your hedgehog. There are several in our garden snuffling about at night, but obviously not enough to make much impression on the slug population. I hope you get another one to take his place.

There seem to be a lot of squashed ones on the roads just now, so there must be quite a few about.