This gardener has gone soft in the head!!!

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by pamish on July 6, 2012 at 23:47

Hedgehogs and toads and frogs and foxes - all useful predators. Or Leopard slugs, it seems. Thrushes are meant to drop them from high onto an 'anvil' to crack them but I havent seen a thrush in years. 

Copper is meant to be a deterrent, it gives them a mini electric shock, so a band of copper round a pot is meant to stop them - except my snails can abseil.

I've begun using the nasty blue pellets. The metaldehyde ones are really nasty but there are also ferric sulphate ones which are marked as OK for organic crops. I dont know what they do further up the food chain. The rain this year has produced such an abundant crop of snails that my principles have gone to pot.

They razored off a load of seedlings, and in desperation I find I've invented something already known as a classic gardener's trick - plastic bottles, cut the end off, and use them as mini cloches over pots, to keep snails off, also helps keep them warm.  It works, I now have foot-high sweet corn plants which are big enough to take care of themselves.

Flame throwers....

Permalink Reply by gilly on July 7, 2012 at 10:34

Do you have any hedgehogs in your garden pamish? I have never ever seen one in mine.

Permalink Reply by Dick Harris on August 21, 2012 at 11:11

The last time I saw a hedgehog in my garden was more than twenty years ago.  A pair of them had crawled under the boiler and died there.

I did see one two weeks ago but that was in a friend's garden in Suffolk:

Permalink Reply by jane waller on July 7, 2012 at 19:27

My garden has been plagued by the slimy creatures for years mostly snails, which are not so bad as you can pick them up by their shells,I have at some times captured 200 a week! Can anybody beat this, and what do you do with them? Please bear in mind I am a sensitive soul and veggie for nearly 40 years. Jane

Permalink Reply by James Putzel on July 7, 2012 at 4:05

Dig small holes in the ground just to fit a plastic up with lip level to the ground and fill it with (cheap) beer. The snails and slugs will die happily. The remains are fertiliser. Though the cups fill up quickly....

Permalink Reply by gilly on July 7, 2012 at 10:32

I have loads of frogs and toads in my garden and the occasional fox but the slugs and snails always seem to outnumber them.... feeling so despondant this year think I would prefer to drink the beer myself...would sort the problem as I wouldnt care less what happens!

Permalink Reply by Madeline on July 13, 2012 at 9:05

Snails! We're inundated with them. They eat absolutely every thing except the weeds. We tried to outwit them one year by planting 18inch high seedling sunflowers. By the morning all we had were a few 2-3inch high stumps.

Our neighbours are not into gardening and their gardens are absolute jungles and really overgrown. After a little bit of rain there they are, a never ending army of snails marching outwards from the undergrowth to munch their way through my carefully nurtured plants. They've even taken to climbing the walls to attack my hanging baskets.

We used to have a thrush which we put out a brick 'table' for. He would smash the snails open on the brick before eating them. Sadly he disappeared due no doubt to next doors cat.

Permalink Reply by Marian Leatherby on July 20, 2012 at 11:17

I believe if the lip of the plastic cup is level with the ground, beetles can fall in and drown.  Beetles are a good thing.  If the lip is about 4mm high they don't fall in but slugs do.  Simples!

Permalink Reply by jane waller on August 21, 2012 at 12:32

Where I used to live we had hedgehogs living in the garden. Great I thought, they will feast merrily on the slugs. I left food out for the cats and the hedgehogs loved it.

However I went outside once in the early hours to find the hedgehogs and the slugs sharing the bowl of cat food! The hedgehogs obviously preferred it to eating the slugs!

Permalink Reply by gilly on August 21, 2012 at 12:43

Does any one on the ladder have hedgehogs in their garden?  I have not seen one in over 15 years of living here. Does anyone know why they are so scarce in this area if this is so?

Permalink Reply by Michael Anderson on August 21, 2012 at 18:54

We used to have at least one who had very noisy sex at dusk. Not seen one for years. Perhaps too many people using slug pellets? The toads are doing a good job in keeping the slugs down though (and my husband's nightly forays with a bucket of slated water)

Permalink Reply by pamish on August 21, 2012 at 21:01

One does not have sex. It takes two. Sometimes more.

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