Does anyone know anything about gardening?

Slugs. So many slugs. We've had 2 weeks of dry weather followed by 2 days of rain. The slugs have just exploded out of the ground. I'd say over the whole garden last night there was on average one slug per 2 square inches. I picked about 100 off the vegetables, but no idea really what to do with them afterwards other than dump them on the other side of the fence (cow field).

@edmundro you're tree surgeon right? Can I ask your opinion on what could be the best course of action to take this oak down a bit? Would pollarding be a bad idea considering I don't think it's been done a regular intervals in the past?

It has a trim last year but I don't think he took anything off the height, just lifted the crown a bit and thinned. It now blocks all sun from my garden in the middle of the day, it at least left a sunny patch by the house previously.

I'll be waiting until winter to do anything drastic but would like to get a plan of action sorted in advance.

No access for cranes unfortunately.

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slugs

Moving them a few metres will not help much; even homeless snails have a homing instinct. I knew someone who used to go out with a pair of scissors and despatch them on the spot. Urgh.

I’m in the centre of Gloucester. Definitely not a case of not seeing them, I spend hours a day in both garden and allotment.
Accept it might just be a regional thing, but still very worrying.

Surely a hammer* would be more efficient?

'* wearing a pair of old jeans recommended

Nice sharp pair of scissors. Snip-snip.

Or you can collect them and put them in the green waste bin.

Or bag them, freeze, and compost.

The most important thing is to spend every evening for a week going out in the garden in the evening with a torch and taking them out. After a week you should be able to scale it down to bi-weekly, then once a week.

I'm working on attracting ground beetles to predate the slugs. Not going well. Need more wood stumps.

I painted some garden snails white ages ago during lockdown to track their movements.

I swear one followed us half a mile down the road to the new house!!! Unless somebody else is also painting them :)

It’s all about biological pest control.

We’ve got black fly on our broad beams, but the lady birds are on it!

Bird feeders to attract birds to eat snails and slugs.

Hopefully getting some frog spawn for the pond soon so that’s another weapon in the arsenal.

I agree. Hoverfly larvae also own black fly.

Birds are hard to attract though. My garden is small and my neighbour's have concrete only =[

Thinking of putting up some boxes but not sure if there's a way to arrange them so that they're safe from neighbourhood cats.

so that they're safe from neighbourhood cats.

Attract Kites & Eagles; let the cats fend for themselves.

I'm working on attracting ground beetles to predate the slugs. Not going well. Need more wood stumps.

I've adopted the approach of encouraging hedgehogs in an attempt to deal with the slugs - 3 hedgehog houses and a rather natty Hedgehog Cafe watering/feeding station. Seems to be working. There are definitely hedgehogs living in the garden, and there appear to be some juveniles which I assume is the product of all the hedgehog heavy breathing from earlier in the year.

Birds are hard to attract though.

I'm currently getting through half a kilogram of bird food a day. Well, I'm not, but the birds are. Lots of pleasant bird song from the back garden, but if it carries on like this they're going to bankrupt me...

That's a problem I have. 2 cats in the house and a fair few neighbours cats in an dout of the garden make me very wary of attracting birds. We have at least 2 red kites who live near us, but I've never seen them be interested in any of the cats. They just chase the farmer around as he's mowing searching for shredded mice.
Maybe I'll have to suck it up and start killing the slugs, but I'll definitely look into hedgehog attraction. We found one in the garden last year, almost went over them with the strimmer!

A flock of a dozen starlings will eat mealworms at about £5/hour if allowed. It's a shame because the other birds love them too and aren't quite so quick which means more watching time.

Slugs. So many slugs. We've had 2 weeks of dry weather followed by 2 days of rain. The slugs have just exploded out of the ground. I'd say over the whole garden last night there was on average one slug per 2 square inches. I picked about 100 off the vegetables, but no idea really what to do with them afterwards other than dump them on the other side of the fence (cow field).

Get some chickens. They'll ruin your garden in a different way, but they sort the slugs out.

Lots of slugs in the back garden, but also beetles and spiders.

Some plants get eaten alive, but some like lavender are completely ignored.

Lavender, hardy geraniums, roses (aphids of course...), dianthus, fuchsia etc... no problem.
When I tried to grow lupine though, well WOW that didn't work.

Cherry tree in the garden is ripening. Alfred Hitchcock would be hitching his cock - so many birds!

With mine it's mostly sparrows. The starlings try to feed from the hanging bird feeder but they're too big. Doesn't stop them from trying though.

I do need to an a cage to the top of the bird table to keep the wood pigeons off though. They can hoover up bird seed like there's no tomorrow.

I have had robins nesting in our shed for a couple of year.

I’m going to put some bird feeders up when I get chance

It’s been 18 months since I started growing these echinacea palida from seed to finally getting flowers!

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Also gave a euphorbia a hard prune because it was looking sick after I moved it in spring (idiot) and forgot the sap was highly irritating to the skin. Not so much for me but my 5 year old helper who promptly rubbed it in their eyes 😬

Ooooh, ouch!!!

Seeds are funny, the packs always claim flowers in the first year. Really not my experience! :)

To be fair they were clearly labelled biannual but I missed the opportunity to get them in the ground last year and I’ve had 20 pots clogging up the greenhouse.

With perennials, even the 'first year flowering ' ones, from seed I think it's fair to assume you'll only get a little bit of flowering at best. Even when I buy proper 9cm pots (and even established shrubs and roses for that matter) I have learned not to expect a lot in the first year. Gardening is definitely about playing the long game