Further Bank Holiday gardening reflections

Here in the UK it is the Bank Holiday, which means all of a sudden all the Cartoon Blog readers who normally tune in for hastily drawn cartoons, weighty analysis on the latest Anglican goings-on and in-depth reflections on campervanning and bicycling suddenly have an urge to know what I have been doing in the…

Here in the UK it is the Bank Holiday, which means all of a sudden all the Cartoon Blog readers who normally tune in for hastily drawn cartoons, weighty analysis on the latest Anglican goings-on and in-depth reflections on campervanning and bicycling suddenly have an urge to know what I have been doing in the garden. Which is lucky, because that is what I am going to blog about.

Since we last talked about the garden I have been trying out various anti-slug remedies and assessing their effectiveness. Here are the results of my findings:

Copper coins: Rubbish. The slugs just walk over them.
Eggshell: Useless. The slugs just stride straight past.
Small traps filled with cheap beer. Semi-effective. But although they catch a lot of slugs there are still more slugs that they didn’t catch. I also now have a lot of Tesco value 2% lager hanging around the place. It tastes like bad shandy. Any takers?
Slug pellets. These were the ones that are harmless to animals and pets. I think they may be harmless to slugs too. One snail did get caught.
Stamping on them. Effective if you can devote your life to watching your plants on a 24 hour-a-day basis.

The latest plan is to put the few surviving plants on a plastic table. The top of the legs of the table have been coated in WD40 household oil, thereby meaning that any slugs who climb up get to a certain level and then fall to their deaths from a great height. I shall report back. Any slugs who want these plants are going to have to resort to James Bond-like antics. Which they probably will.

In other gardening news: Do giant thistles have no predators?

Enjoy your Bank Holiday if you have one. Garden well my friends.