Slugs & Snails

🐌 A little reminder 🐌

You may not have seen many slugs or snails recently and that's because of the cold weather. These slimy creatures tend to hibernate in the topsoil over winter and may even get into your house in search of a warm overnight stay and some grub. I know from experience that they love cat food 🙀

However, the weather is beginning to warm up and will soon be the perfect conditions for them to invade your growing area and devour you newly planted seedlings.



As I've mentioned before, you will never get rid of them altogether, but it's worth trying to keep the numbers down to avoid the heartache and disappointment they can bring. Here's a few things you can do in preparation for the possible onslaught.

1. Keep your beds tidy, pick up yellowing leaves that have fallen on the ground.
2. Look inside upturned flower pots or under any planks of wood. All the dark damp places they love to hide.
3. Check over any plastic compost bags you have lying around or any black weed suppressant material.
4. Keep your grass short. Long grass is a favourite hiding place for slugs especially if next to a wooden raised bed.
5. Look under any bricks or large stones.
6. Make yourself some slug pubs or traps.
7. Gather up all the slugs and snails you can find and dispose of them how you see fit.

Basically go on a slug hunt and get rid of them before they start reproducing and believe me they will, which means you will soon get lots of baby slugs and snails who have voracious appetites chomping away at your crops!

One last thing...Please avoid using slug pellets as they are bad for your soil even the wildlife friendly ones.

Happy hunting!

Lottie News!

Each January I try and take it easy, which I sort of did, but I'm very much the kind of person that can't sit still and feels like I have to accomplish something every day. So at the first sign of a bit of sunshine I decided to give the greenhouse a spring clean. It was quite a job and I ended up having to get the Geezer hubby to give me a hand to clean the panes outside on the roof. It's now however looking spick and span, but no doubt it won't stay that way for long.

Everything has slowed down on the Lottie. I still have things growing like the Brussels, Chard, Kale, Spring Cabbage, Leeks and Swedes, but they're just sitting there, not getting any bigger. It's no wonder really as the temperatures have been quite low for London. It had been -5.6C (21.9F) in my poly tunnel the other night 😯

After the frosts I decided to dig up some Parsnips. I was a little apprehensive as practically all the leaves had died down and I couldn't see where they were. Unfortunately I managed to put a prong of my fork through a rather substantial specimen and heard a pop under the surface where it had completely split in half. When I did finally get it out it just needed a good clean up along with the others, so no real damage done.

Nothing major happening on the plot at the moment, but quite a bit of activity at home in the greenhouse. Aubergines, Peppers and Chillies were sown and popped in my propagator with the Aubergines already being potted on. The Leeks and the Onions in the greenhouse will have a long way to go before they need to be moved to plug trays and besides these will be for me rather than some of the Aubergines, which will be for the Barnes Pond Fair again in April where I will have my plant stall.

While going through my seed box, or should I say trunk, haha! I came across three opened packets of Meteor peas, the hardy ones, and decided to give them an overnight soak as I didn't know how viable they would be and soaking them gives them a bit of a head start. I then sowed half of them in root trainers and left them in the cold greenhouse and the other half in toilet roll tubes on my kitchen windowsill. It will be interesting to see which germinate first. If I do get any they will go out in the big pots on the Lottie covered with some horticultural fleece to keep them warm.