Does anyone know anything about gardening?

Fair point

Early lunch completed, sitting in the conservatory listening to to TMS.
Bit of scrapy noise, quite normal as some birds choose to land on the plastic roof,
and then access the rain water that accumulates in the guttering.
The shadow/part silhouette is not the expected pigeon or mapgpie shape,
it appears to have two sections and one is making a desperate noise.
I manage to make it outside without disturbing it,
and,
witness a sparrowhawk flying away with a lbj* in the talons of one foot.

[* technical twitching term for indeterminate, normally small,
little brown job].

Never seen a sparrowhawk round here before, but presumably it normally frequents the not that distant municipal golf course.

I was just reading that it seems there's a colony of parakeets by the River Lea in east London now. Been there 3 years. Came down the Regents Canal from Hyde Park possibly.

https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2019/jun/06/the-great-green-expansion-how-ring-necked-parakeets-took-over-london

There's a colony of them down the bottom of my garden too...

Don't get 'em my way, the local crows attack them

Don't get 'em my way, I'll shoot them.

Planted out some French and African Marigolds yesterday. 3 of my 9 Hydrangeas looking great. Only 3 years old.

3 Attachments

Love the lilac one. Beautiful.

Peonies - do I deadhead them, now the blooms are going manky? Or just hack them to the ground.

Nothing works.

Not true! This is the video I based our slug fence on. It's all around the edge of a raised bed we grow veg in and it works great.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZoBeKS64_xc

I just bought a 9v battery and these:
https://smile.amazon.co.uk/dp/B009K1NUY8/ref=pe_385721_37986871_TE_item?sa-no-redirect=1
https://smile.amazon.co.uk/dp/B008EIU7SK/ref=pe_385721_37986871_TE_item?sa-no-redirect=1
https://smile.amazon.co.uk/dp/B000Y8GX4A/ref=pe_385721_37986871_TE_item?sa-no-redirect=1

But you also need one of these (I had one already):

It works great. Once the slug or snail crosses the first wire and touches the second they retreat straight away. Occasionally a slug (never a snail) for some reason doesn't retreat or gets stuck and they get fried. I don't lose sleep over that though as it normally doesn't hurt them.

Also totally organic, I didn't want to use slug pellets, too many nasty chemicals in my garden.

Copper tape doesn't work according to this although we have a raised herb bed on top of a built in cupboard in our garden with thick copper edges and it never get slugs in it either...
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-45652170

How snails react to it

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3muFJtSqyjs

You'd think having a wife who is a garden designer would mean we have an immaculate garden. Absolute jungle. Have had our first crop of redcurrents though as well as some lovely early spuds. Courgettes are coming on but slowly.

Complete sluggfest in the past too. We tried copper tape to zero effect before we realised they were coming up through the soil. Went with nematodes. Has worked so far for several seasons.

How does one encourage beetles.

Maybe a little pat on the back, some kind words. Don't over do it though. Don't want them getting big headed.

Slugs slugs.
I appreciate their good work in breaking things down. I don't like how they eat through the veggies.
We have a few toads who I don't want to harm, but they are not keeping up with the slug population. I wonder whether they even prey on the big tough orange trimmed slugs (Red or Spanish or hybrid) as they just seem like too much of a mouthful.
Have used the 'friendly' pellets to protect specific plants, but worry how they affect the toads.
Considering nematodes, but worrying about the toads and also don't really want to completely wipe out the slugs, they do an important job.

I'll probably curse it but since planting the Lavender i've had less slugs. Apparently they don't like the scent. Using coffee grounds around the affected plants but not sure that's doing much.

The electric fence is very clever but can't see how it would work for normal (not raised) beds. I'd also worry about my kids getting zapped!

but worrying about the toads

Worrying they'll have nothing to eat? The nematodes are slug specific I think and basically dissolve them from the inside (from what I understand).

We don't like to eat diseased things, I think the toads don't either, or it's not good for them.
Found a couple things saying the nematodes don't work on Spanish slugs or generally the big ones on the surface.
Some interesting thoughts here, including that any trap or pellet that contains an attractor just makes it worse. https://www.slughelp.com/natural-slug-control-effective-organic-non-violent/

Found a couple things saying the nematodes don't work on Spanish slugs or generally the big ones on the surface.

They seem to work on ours - we have (had) mostly big fat orange ones with the occasional leopard slug. We still have plenty in the wider garden but they don't seem to be at concentrations where they can destroy entire crops as they have in the past.

I don't think they do the toad (or anything else) any harm apart from denying them a food source, but each to their own.

Hey I’m gonna have to defend our little friends here , I’ve had my allotment for 15 years now and never killed a slug knowingly and although in the beginning I suffered great losses of seedlings and crops I have found planting at different times just as successful as traps barriers and the fact that not all species of slug is as destructive as one believes, I think as gardeners we should learn to grow without killing, maybe leave it to the predators who rely on it cheers k

Cheers. Yeah if I was to use them it would be only on the veg patch, I would hope the slugs munching through the heaps of discarded plant matter would remain. However, they move quick, so surely they just spread out again.

the occasional leopard slug

I believe the leopards eat the other ones, so to be encouraged.

This is great to hear. I am certainly conflicted about killing them. Much less conflicted about killing the ones I perceive to be "unnatural" (Spanish invaders) but actually I realised I can't tell the difference between Spanish and Red. All I know is they're tough, much tougher than the ones I remember from when I was a child...

Great, now we are two I’m sure many more to follow,

My daughter would be distraught if the snails disappeared - she regularly rides to school with one stuck to her arm.

Unfortunately in our garden we have found they can completely destroy all of our veg and a lot of other stuff if left. We have a particularly good wildlife environment as we're on a railway embankment and have piles of dead / rotting matter about in an already fairly 'wild' garden, so probably quite encouraging to natural predators. The sheer number of slugs just overwhelm us though, especially when it's wet.

I'm definitely less about killing them and more about making my plants unattractive to them.

I'll add myself to this group. Have found by chance that crushed egg shells help keep them away, but I’d never kill one knowingly.