Up with the larks, down with the slugs.

Saturday 23rd June 2012
A lark soars into the air as the sun rises.

As the sun breaks the horizon, so up rise the skylarks. They sing unseen on the ground but as the sun pokes its head into the Eastern sky a magical moment occurs as, within a minute, five or six larks soar up belting out their song. They are nesting in the meadow at the moment. Don was lucky enough to find a nest on his side of the fence this week.

After a wet night, not such a magical sight met my eyes as I passed the potato patch. I just couldn't ignore it, so I spent the next two hours exterminating the munching little slimeballs. The weeds have run amock too, giving them a perfect little jungle in which they can hide during the day, emerging at night to do their damage. So another hour was spent pulling up sowthistles and fat hen. At least they come up easily from the wet soil. The pigs and chickens appreciated it. 

It looks as if the dwarf beans and beetroots we sowed in the lanes between the potatoes face being eaten as soon as they push their first leaves into the air. So I have now sown spares of all my beans into paper pots. It's worth a try and will give the plants a start. Who knows, by the time they are ready to be transplanted into the soil it may just be a bit drier and my slug hunts may be taking their toll.

I am now even considering ducks as an anti-slug measure too. Cayugas look good.
http://slatehousefarm.co.uk/Cay.html

By late morning I had achieved a great deal, but it felt like the one step forward that goes with the two steps back.

So I decided to spend the afternoon and evening doing something new. The herb bed has been a triumph this year, and I have filled any gaps with pot marigolds, lobelias, alyssums and tagetes, as well as transplanting in a drift of pot marjoram and a seedtray of anise hyssop.

The herb bed has been a triumph this year

I have been growing trays of annual flowers in the greenhouse and nursery area, but without having anywhere to put them! The plan was for lots to go into the veg patch, but for the moment I'm just trying to make the best of a bad thing there. At least I'm not the only one experiencing considerable difficulties growing veg this year.

So, instead, I decided to finish digging out a flower border in the lawn. Next year it can accommodate some of the cottage garden perennials I have been growing - delphiniums, hollyhocks, lupins and the like. But for this year it can house the annuals. At the end of the year I will be able to take a monster harvest of seed for next years extravaganza! 

Seedtrays are good, but dry out all too easily or, at the moment, become easily waterlogged. Hopefully the plants will survive and flourish in the open  ground.

A dozen or so barrowloads of turves later and I had myself a border. Several hundred seedlings transplanted and I had this... 

It's a first expedition into the world of raising annual flowers and I'm hoping this bed can come close to matching the herb bed for colour and beauty.

All we need now is for the sun to come out!

Slugs.



Thursday 14th June 2012

Someone has asked how I control slugs.

Well, it would appear that "not well enough" should be the answer. They somewhat took me by surprise this year, after I saw barely a handful in the whole of last year. Guess that's one benefit of a drought.
In stark contrast, this year there are hundreds. Not the big, fat juicy ones, but small, flesh-coloured little cigarillos. Where have they all come from? They seem to live in the grass, which has been difficult to keep short this year, and particularly like to lurk around the base of dandelions.

Let's get straight tho the point.

I will not use slug pellets. They may do a good job of poisoning the slugs and snails, but where do you think that poison goes when a hedgehog or a toad eats its nightly fill of slugs, or when a song thrush smashes snails against its anvil? And when they're gone, I don't see many other candidates willing to make a meal of a slug.

In fact, I've got nothing against slugs per se. They are actually quite wonderful inventions of nature. But completely untrainable! They are welcome to live in my grass as long as they stick to recycling dead vegetation. But no! They have to get greedy. If only they'd wait for the plants to get big, they would be welcome to a few of the outside leaves. But instead they continue their unsustainable ways, destroying any succulent leaf or stem before it gets the chance to grow into something bigger and tastier. Why on earth can't they eat grass instead? Then they'd actually be doing something useful.

Anyway, the upshot of all this is that they need to be controlled, shown no mercy. But how?

Barriers
Last year I bought a job lot of SlugStoppa (or some other similar name which escapes me) while it was on special offer. Basically, it's small clay granules which the slugs don't like to crawl over - I think it sucks the moisture from their slimy coat. This is great in the dry, but it does not work when the ground is wet, as it has been for the last 10 weeks. It does dry out again and continue to work, but for a veg garden as large as mine I'd need a mountain of the stuff. It'd be cheaper to get all my veg delivered from Harrods!

So I use it selectively, usually inside a milk carton cloche. Used in this way it seems to do a pretty decent job of protecting individual young plants.

But I can't protect every bean and squash seedling in this way. Nor will it stop them nibbling my turnips and getting into my brassicas.

So I need to look for other methods to control them. I am thinking that the broken oyster shell which I buy for the chickens might do a very good job as a natural barrier. It is sharp, very dry to the touch, and can be bought fairly cheaply in bulk amounts. Next time I order from the feed suppliers I'll get them to put in a bag.

Other barrier methods I read about include using thorny offcuts, holly leaves, sand, broken egg shells. I'm sure they all help, but not on the scale I would need to use them. Past experiments have shown these methods to be partial deterrents, but wet weather makes them less effective at a time when they need to be at their most effective.
Of course, if you've got unlimited access to copper you could surround your beds with copper pipes. Slugs and snails will not crawl ove rthe stuff. This could mean they stay IN your veg bed too!
Just mind out for metal thieves!


Traps and enticements
I must admit, I've been left on the starting blocks here. I do have a few slug traps and should really deploy them. A job to go high up on the list.
Always seems like a terrible waste of beer though! But the damage at the moment outweighs the alcohol considerations. Must start brewing my own. Not sure if cider or elderflower champagne will work as well.

Another way to catch the slimy little critters is to invite them in. Deliberately tempt them by placing flat stones or large leaves strategically. Upturned orange and grapefruit skins are supposed to work well for this. Comfrey is, apparently, irresistible to slugs.
Though I feel guilty and really should add some of these to my armoury, I have my reservations too. I have enough routine jobs to more than fill my days already. I know it's a question of priorities, but I can't help thinking I'd just be providing the slugs with some luxury accommodation within easy reach of a first class eating establishment.
The same goes for leaving some nice rotting comfrey leaves as a tasty nibble. I just feel I could end up attracting more slugs into the area.

Give them the chop.
The best method of control, by far, is to get out there on a damp evening with a sharp tool (I use the edge of my trowel) and go hunting. Show no mercy!
There may be times when it seems that every chopped slug you have left has grown back into two, but if you put in a concerted effort it will begin to work. The other evening I killed 700 slugs in about an hour! The population will not be able to sustain this, as long as I keep at the job.
Unfortunately, by far the best time to do this is when it's actually drizzling. You will be shocked at the number of slugs you find, but better that you find them than they stay hidden in the vegetation. Just be prepared to get a bit soggy and think of all those lovely veg you'll enjoy in a couple of months time.


Encourage predators
Do everything you can to encourage helpers. A small pond will bring in frogs and toads. You may not have any hedgehogs left in your area, but if you do make sure you don't harm them. Give them a brush pile to move into, or even one of those overpriced hedgehog houses. Same goes for song thrushes. If you can, give them somewhere to nest like a hedgerow or an ivy-clad tree.

I could let the chickens into the veg patch for a while. They would help the situation by eating any slugs they found, but would completely undermine this by scratching up all the seedlings and pecking all their favourite leaves such as the sorrel and Swiss chard! I do let the guineafowl wander freely as they are not so destructive, but clearly two is not enough to keep on top of all the creepy-crawlies.

Nematodes
The soil is full of nematode worms, millions and billions and zillions of them. Some of them are very harmful to slugs. Not sure how, but they can be a very effective control mechanism. You can buy them conveniently in a powder which you just add to water. It only lasts about 6 weeks, so you need to apply  a course of them from early spring.
The main trouble with this method of control is the expense. It's the Harrods thing again. Although if I just had a couple of small veg beds I would consider this method of control.

Writing this has reminded me though. I'm sure I read somewhere that you can grow your own nematodes. I seem to remember it's pretty disgusting. Leaving a pile of dead slugs in water for a few weeks seems to ring a bell.
Now I really must get onto that.

Don't throw them over the neighbours
Not that the neighbours might not deserve it, but they'll just come back if you're the one supplying the food. Unless you are prepared to pick them all up and drive them miles away, you really do need to kill them.

Salt
If you've ever poured salt onto a slug or snail, you'll see what effect it has on them. Looks like a slow, painful death, but it will kill them. However, if you really can't bear to touch them or chop them in half, just remember that you will end up using a lot of salt if you have as many slugs as me and that salt really is not good for nearly all plants.


In conclusion, then, there are many ways to control slugs but none of them is perfect. Probably best to combine as many as possible. The key is to keep the offensive going. And please don't be tempted to take the easy option and scatter poison all over the place.

Eggs-asperation

Wednesday 13th June 2012

Before my tales of woe, this is my first significant harvest of the year.
They were lovely with sausages.

Eggs-asperation
Well, the chickens are down to one measly egg a day between the lot of them and I really don't know what's going on. Since they were laying at full capacity on the shortest day of the year, I suspect they've just gone off lay as it approaches the longest day of the year...ummmm...something wrong there, isn't it supposed to be the other way round?

Not only that. Remember that dozen beautiful blue eggs I collected about three and a half weeks ago. They're now three days late hatching...in other words, scrambled and fried! Not a single hatchling out of twelve. Something must have gone seriously wrong, either at the chicken end of things or at our incubator end.

As the for chicks which we have managed to hatch over the last few attempts. The vast majority seem to be cockerels! Only four new hens to lay eggs out of fifteen chicks that we did actually manage to hatch.

Let's hope that Chick of Elvis, who has somehow managed to acquire NINE eggs to sit on, has a bit more luck. They'll be hybrids, not the beautiful mixed flock of rare breed hens which I am aiming for, but at least they might lay some eggs!

So overall not going too well on the egg front.

Slugging it to the slugs!
If only they were like slugs. It seems that for every one I chop in half with the trowel another two spawn. Tonight, in one hour, I got over SEVEN HUNDRED of the blighters. Multiply that by one nibble each and it's a lot of damage. So my plan is to have a concentrated attack on them every evening, which usually means means me getting a drenching. They've certainly enjoyed the wet conditions this year. And to think, last year I only saw about a dozen all year. They must have been lying dormant in the soil.

Look what they've done to my lovely Globe Artichoke seedlings.
They got past the milk carton.
I've now applied a liberal sprinkling of slug deterrent - just in time.

Squash Tyres

Saturday 9th June 2012

At the moment a pattern seems to be emerging. Grey starts to the day seem to lead on to the better days weatherwise. And so it was today. A day to be busy in the garden.
I had a big job to do. The squash tyres.

Luxury High-Rise Squash Accommodation
Some of my cucurbits (squashes, pumpkins, courgettes and cucumbers) have gone in with the sweetcorn and beans as part of my Three Sisters experiment. The rest though, have their own special area, each with it's own home fully equipped with everything it could possibly need. Firstly, a tyre to keep it warm and to raise it above the ground. Then, a layer of turfs, back to back, to rot down and give goodness. The next layer of the cake, well rotted horse manure for strong growth. On top a covering of topsoil, just to stop the diet being too rich. Atop all this, each young plant, lovingly reared in the greenhouse, would get its own protective cloche made from a milk carton.

When I showed Sue how to do this, she put the milk carton upside-down...and it made a lot of sense. Easier to secure, a smaller rim to push into the soil and a larger rim to catch the rain and allow for expansion. The final luxury, a layer of slug repellent granules.
Now, this didn't all build itself. In fact it took the best part of the day. Just one last thing to prepare before my cherished plants came to their new home. A slug bashing session.

This year has been quite the opposite of last for slugs. So it didn't take me long to dispatch well over a hundred slugs. Just one of these, nibbling through the stem of a young plant, could wreck all the effort put into rearing it. I know I've talked about working with nature, but I'm afraid that doesn't include slugs. Well, not until I've managed to attract more hedgehogs, frogs and toads into the garden.

Luxury high-rise apartments for the cucurbits

A big scare
Mid afternoon our cat, Geronimo (Gerry for short) came miaowing up to me in the garden. When we moved in we acquired three delightful kittens, mainly to help with the rodent situation. They were supposed to be feral, but we are cat people, so these were always going to be loved and mollycoddled. We were devastated last spring to lose two of them on the road within a short space of time. Olly and Charlie are still much missed and lovingly remembered.
Now, Gerry disappears for long spells into the fields or hunting in the dykes, and occasionally he just decides not to respond to us, especially if he is hunting. So it is always a relief when he puts in an appearance. So I put him in the house at 3 o'clock and got on with my work in the knowledge that he was safe.

At quarter to ten, just as I was contemplating stopping for bad light, Sue came down to where I was working and said that Gerry was nowhere to be seen in the house and that he hadn't come to see her since she got home late afternoon. Convinced that I had put him in, and that the door had not come open again, I searched the house, but no sign. The first place we look, with dread, when Gerry does not come, is on the road. Then along the dyke, in case he has ended up in there. But that's when it's light enough to see. By now it was gloom, heading for pitch black.

Well, to cut a long story short, we searched more and more desperately with no luck. He had always come in before dark, but it was now approaching midnight. I still could not understand how he had got out, so searched the house for the third time...and there, under the bed, tucked away behind an old quilt, sat a very devected looking cat.
What a huge relief! But something was clearly up. He really was not himself, listless, no purr and no response to us. We put him on the bed and went to sleep. It wouldn't be long till the morning and we could see how he was there. At least I wouldn't be out searching for him at first light.

Slimeballs

Wednesday 23rd May 2012
Another warm, muggy day.

This is the second year of our asparagus bed and I'm being ever so good and resisting temptation, letting the plants establish for another year before we start harvesting. If only someone would tell that to the slugs!
So much for mulching the asparagus with hay. The garden's entire slug population has moved into this deliciously dark, damp microclimate, with a choice of asparagus restaurants just a short slug slide away. So I've un-mulched it.

I did take a nice close-up shot, but it was out of focus, even with my glasses on. Still getting used to using the DSLR again - the compact has to be sent back to Hong Kong for repair, so goodness knows when we'll see that again - one disadvantage of international internet purchases.

ed...

Just One Big April Shower

 

Monday 23rd April 2012

Tuesday 24th April 2012







This year the month of April sure has lived up to its reputation.

I can't believe I'm about to do this, but I'm actually going to moan about the rain, something us English people just love to do and a pleasure we've been deprived of for quite some time.

All I need is a couple of days dry and the soil will be perfect for breaking into a fine tilth ready to welcome a host of seeds and seedlings. I don't mind getting cold and wet, though I'd rather not, but at the moment the soil's just too lumpy and cloggy for sowing seeds into. At least my system of small veg beds will mean I can minimise treading on the soil and destroying it's structure.
Meanwhile, the queue builds up. I've filled the coldframe with baby plants hardy enough to survive there and with slightly bigger ones moved on from the greenhouse. I've filled the spaces with those that needed to be in the heat of the house to germinate and reach a few days old. And I've sown the next lot of seeds and filled up the staging in the dining room.
The whole system is now on the point of gridlock, with a giant bottleneck at the actually-going-into-the-veg-garden stage.

Not only that, but the slugs are on the rampage. Not compared to London, where the imbalance of the urban ecosystem gives them an unfair advantage, but for the first time I am seeing slugs in significant numbers. Only small ones and not enough to do much significant damage at the moment, but enough to cause a threat. The one crop they seem to have gone straight for is the young pak choi seedlings. Now, as tasty as pak choi is to us, it seems to be even more tasty to every manner of moving creature out there. I'm on the point of giving up on it, but I've got a couple more experiments up my sleeve before that. I'm going to trying sowing a lot more than I need, in the hope that a few get through and survive. This is the same tactic used by a frog when it lays enough spawn to give rise to about a thousand tadpoles. I'm also going to try the other extreme, growing a few plants in the pampered luxury of the polytunnel. We'll see what works best, or we'll learn to like something else green!

The crops that did make it into the soil outside are enjoying the rain though! The peas, in all their various sizes and shades, are sprouting up and reaching for the skies. The broad beans have awakened and pushed their bushy leaves through the crust. And the first potatoes have already nudged up through the trenches and breathed the fresh air above. Let's hope we have no more sharp frosts or I'll have to get out there and earth them up a little more. In fact, I'll do that anyway at some stage, but I'd prefer to wait till the soil's a bit drier (and lighter).

Anyway, most of the day was spent inside today, sowing seeds. Some are second sowings to continue the succession at harvest time. Others are those which grow fast but can't go out until all risk of frost has passed and the soil is a little warmer. So the squashes, pumpkins and courgettes, the cucumbers, sweet corn and more beans. All these have giant seeds which result in fast-growing giant seedlings with huge leaves. They're amazing to grow. Now that they are started off, I need to prepare their final growing sites as soon as I can, digging in lots of compost and manure and giving them plenty of space. I have plans for the 'Three Sisters' - more on this at the time, and for splashes of radiant sunflowers to mingle in and brighten up this patch.
I also planted up some perennial flower seeds and a stack of rudbeckia and cosmos seeds saved from last year. And finally, I've started off most of the herbs. These packets can yield hundreds of plants and are an ample reward for patience.

A New Polytunnel Is On Its Way
Being stuck in all day often costs me money, since the internet is too inviting. And so it was today, although this was a purchase which was long overdue and not unexpected. For today, I finally got round to ordering a polytunnel, all 14 foot by 40 foot of it. The price hiked up from the basic to almost double that, mainly because I have bought every conceivable extra to protect it from our fenland winds - storm protection brackets, crop bars, a triple ridge system, the premier model with closer hoops... also double doors front and back, ground cover and irrigation system (though I hope that most of the water will be diverted from the garage roof into a bath I shall sink into the ground inside the tunnel - this will provide a little stored heat in the cold winter nights too.)

It should be here in about a week, and I'm sure it won't be long till I've filled it up.

Birdy distractions
First thing this morning, two Fieldfares flew from the Ash trees in the garden. They will certainly be very late reaching their breeding grounds as they should have been gone when most of their cousins left. I've not seen any round for a few weeks now. I was treated to stunning views of a Barn Owl just outside the dining room window but the Short-eared Owls seem to have finally moved on now. Not seen any for a couple of days.

Then, early afternoon, I find out there were two White Storks in a field on the outskirts of Spalding yesterday, and this morning! They would have been a very welcome diversion. A few days ago, a remarkable flock of nine birds were photographed from a tractor somewhere in the South-West. Six of these were subsequently seen a couple of times somewhere in Wales. Could these Lincolnshire birds have come from the same flock? Whatever their origins, they were reported to have flown South from Spalding. All they had to do was to veer a little East and they might just come over the farm. So, between the frequent and very heavy showers, I kept popping out down the garden to give me a good all round perspective, but nothing. Not really a surprise. They weren't likely to gain much height in this weather, and visibility was not great so I would need a large slice of luck for them to fly close enough to see. Besides, I doubt that in this weather they went very far at all. Probably grubbing around in some nearby field.