Does anyone know anything about gardening?

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Bravo!

Nicely done!

tried copper tape to zero effect before we realised they were coming up through the soil

ha

little pat on the back, some kind words

ha

Wife has been told that a strong garlic solution will discourage slugs.

May only work on vampire slugs obvs.

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!

I was thinking about this, you could just push pieces of wood into the border around the bed so they were level with the ground and install the fence on top? But yes, it's harder.

Your kids aren't going to get zapped, it runs on a 9v battery! When I was a kid we used to dare each other to put the contacts on our tongues :)

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 visited friends in Oxfordshire last weekend and their veg patch was amazing. I couldn't understand how it had been so successful without being eaten by slugs but they just aren't a big problem in their garden. A lot of London gardens (including ours) have huge numbers of slugs. I would say for no obvious reason but we suspect ours come from under next door's decking.

We have a female blackbird who occasionally visits and eats our slugs (interesting/gruesome to watch as they 'wipe' them from side to side on the ground to remove the slime then chop them into pieces with their beak) but I've never seen any other birds eating them.

So I suspect this London garden problem is caused by lack of bird life, which definitely isn't a problem in our friend's part of Oxfordshire. Badgers will take slugs too but again there aren't so many in Clapton.

Thrushes eat snails and slugs too. We have great tits, blue tits, magpies, wood pigeons, collared doves, rooks, goldfinches, parakeets, sparrows, robins, starlings, the occasional jay and woodpecker. But I've never seen a thrush or blackbird in the garden.

Thanks! Not pictured:

• the lawn, because it is in a shameful near-jungle condition and needed mowing about four weeks ago

• the amount of time it’s taken me, during which I’ve had two kids. I can however blame the two kids for all delays, so that’s something.

No thrushes here either. Rest sound similar to yours but I've not seen or heard a woodpecker. Had a house martin singing in the tree behind us though recently which was amazing.

I think we literally have one pair of blackbirds so they aren't constant visitors, more occasional, but I love their song so don't mind them stealing my blueberries too much.

Had a house martin singing in the tree behind us though recently which was amazing.

Really? Which one was it?

This is "swinging the blue lamp" somewhat (police anecdote time) but when I was providing armed protection at Sir Humphrey Atkin's house in the early 90s; he and his wife would walk around their garden collecting slugs and snails. They then crossed the road outside and deposited them on a small green opposite. If the slugs/snails managed to cross the road during the night then same again the next night. Thankfully the IRA didn't know this went on.

Thankfully the IRA didn't know this went on.

I wasn't aware the IRA had a policy on the translocation of gastropods.

Unable to trim the box hedge for the moment as there’s a baby pigeon on nest below,

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Yeah I agree, its hard to encourage birdlife when the garden is pretty small. Also hard to get hedgehogs, badgers, etc in fenced off gardens (Fenced well to protect from neighbour's pets)

I think i should plant more slug resistant stuff probably.

Why do you think they're so bothered about borders?

And I thought Sir Humphrey was only a character in a TV comedy show.

defintely a good year for the poppies, got an ornamental mix 5 or so years back and keep re seeding the ground, lovely, i also put a quite a few around the edges of hackney marshes early spring and am seeing those in flower now

put in lots of wild meadow and bee / butterfly friendly plants this spring and the garden is alive with buzzy things

gonna chuck out a jam jar of poppy seeds this afternoon in various spots in my neighbourhood

what's the general advice on garden waste disposal? It's a work job, we have a corner of a park around our building and we don't really do enough maintaining to have a compost. There's so much to get rid of too, as we've it's not really an option.

Is there

For some reason I can't edit that ^

*Is there a reccomended garden waste removals company in London who wouldn't just take everything to landfill?

Th

Does your local authority offer a garden waste collection service? Most do, some for free and some for a small fee.

Those are lovely. My mum brought me some York poppy seeds from her garden in Argyll.