Vegmonkey and the Mrs.

  Don’t mesh with us!                       We will not co-opper-ate…

Ello’ it’s the Mrs here, I’ve finally got around to doing another post!

Every single night, just before bed, VM can be found crouching around the veggie beds on a hunting spree for slugs with his weapon of choice - a pair of scissors! From my safe haven indoors, being too squeamish to look, I also hear the occasional crunching of snails under an unforgiving foot. I wouldn’t normally be one for advocating the brutal killing of our squelchy friends, but when it comes to protecting our veggies then I’ll happily turn a blind eye!

Over the year we have tried to tackle the beasts in many different ways and it certainly seems to be our biggest challenge to date…and continues to be so! One very recent effective method for us though has been the use of chicken wire - both by laying it over seedlings in trays and by creating an upright barrier around the maturing plants. We have found it needs to be adjusted quite a lot with the courgettes as they keep on spreading outwards, but so far we’re really happy with the results.

Come and have a go if you think you’re ‘ard enough!

At the start of the season we bought some nematodes, having been impressed with them last year (however we now think that was down to the fact that the raised beds were newly filled and therefore no existing slugs were present). Annoyingly this year, no dramatic improvement has been noticed - especially frustrating when the little blighters cost so much.

My favourite of the defences is our copper tape, mainly because I think it looks good! We have placed it all the way around the beds and It does seem to do an okay job at keeping the slugs and snails out but obviously not if they’re in the soil already.

We’ve experimented with many options - coffee grounds, egg shells, beer traps (why waste it!) and sawdust to name a few, but none seem as fun to VM as using his bare hands!

The worst pest in our garden is slugs. Without question. But that wasn’t always the case. In fact, up until 2 weekends ago, the worst pets was cats (i do like them when they aren’t pooing, we used to have two little men ourselves). I had plans to build huge cane frames to go over the beds, to cover them in enviromesh and to remove them when we were home. The purpose of this was going to be to keep the cat off the beds.

Every morning, after my cup of tea and toast i have a wander out back, only to usually find a new piece of dirt turned over and a pile of crusty turd.

Two weeks ago i bought a sonic cat scarer. It has a very high frequency that we can’t hear, but the cats can. When they walk across in front of it, it sets the alarm off, and the cats run away. I make sure i turn it off when i’m outside so not to waste the battery but every now and again i leave it on. I know i wouldn’t want to go to the loo in a garden with a shrill siren ringing in my ears!

The result is that we are able to keep the beds completely uncovered! No expensive covers and no poo!

(There was one mess last week, but i’ve found that if i move the ‘machine’ every couple of days it confuses the little blighters!)

It did cost £30 and i will need to replace the battery every now and again but that is a small price to pay for seedlings that are actually allowed to grow!

I’ve read lots on forums and in magazines and think this actually works!

 Now, to work on those slugs…more nematodes  think!