A general growing update on how the crops in the Cultivation Station are performing. Some positive bits but also some negative bits too.

Something is attacking the pepper plants and the broccoli for that matter, the leaves look a little holey at the moment. I have checked underneath them and there are no bugs, and after soaking the plant in bug killer (just in case) I can only assume that it must be slugs/snails. So in response I have put down some of that pest friendly ‘slug stop’ as a border around the raised bed and hopefully they will stay away from it.

We’ll see….

In other pepper plant news, I do have a huge pepper forming, it is still green instead of yellow but it looks lovely at the moment and it’s my current pride and joy. Hopefully it should be ready for picking and eating soon!

The red onions are also growing well and they really seem to have shot up since I took the photo, I was under the impression they would be ready to pick soon but Daisyboots has informed me that I have to wait until the bulbs pop out of the soil. I was just going to yank the so that shows how little I know really!

Tomatoes are also a success story so far. Although they are still green, they are very large and we have noticed more little ones appearing. I have been advised to cane up the tomato plant and chop away the stalks that bear no fruit which should help ripen them. In all fairness we probably should cane them up as the plant is a huge heap of tomatoes and leaves at the moment, lying on the raised bed looking exhausted from holding so much fruit.

Following the onslaught of the slug attack, the lettuce in the Lucky Clover has recovered really well. I must admit I thought it was dead, but it is looking lovely and healthy with large green leaves. It’s a huge relief as I thought I may have to chuck it away.

And finally we have had a few more strawberries, and I say a few as I am wondering if they are coming to the end of the season as there are not many more appearing. However it’s not all bad as thanks to some very helpful advice we have managed to get a few more strawberry plants off our first one.

Does anyone know what I should do to ensure the strawberry plants survive when it gets cold?

Busy time all round with the Bank Holiday and all. A couple of updates but I’ll begin with part one, an amusing Snail tale….

I used to be very good at throwing but I realised it wasn’t really my strong point when, slightly enraged, I accidentally relocated the first snail I found on the Cultivation Station the other week to the neighbours garden. I confess that in my quick thinking I forgot to take a picture to show you all, so this where this blog post is going to get amusing.

Once I realised I did in fact need photos to put on this blog I decided to find another snail and just remake the scene, but I couldn’t find a single one. I looked everywhere, behind bushes, under leaves, near the fences and in every conceivable nook and cranny I could find. But there wasn’t a single one to be found.

So I next enlisted help and was told quite categorically ‘no’. Anyway Rich finally came around to the idea and it was a good job he did as he found one in the front garden.

Never in all my life had I ever been so happy to see a snail. I really have to wonder what the neighbours must think…. ‘weirdo’s is all that springs to mind at the moment.

So I put the snail back on the Cultivation Station where I had found the original and it seemed a bit sleepy or dead, I wasn’t sure which at the time so we decided to go for a quick walk and see if we could find anymore. We could only find slugs, slugs and more slugs but no snails. By the time we had got back to the garden, Mr/Mrs Snail had woken up and was well on their way to yummy scrummy plant delicacies , and I have to say they are actually quick movers.

As it happened this snail quite liked the look of the potato plant, and me being slightly amused that it wanted to eat the most random thing in our raised bed, I couldn’t help but leave it a bit longer and take more photos. Rich on the other hand is quite partial to his potato plant so it wasn’t much longer after we noticed holes appearing where the snail had been that he insisted we remove it and call it a night.

Things we do for photography! Probably just me…enjoy the photos.

So after the slug fiasco I forgot to tell you that the red onions finally appeared the other day.
I was getting worried that they had died, or that I had planted the bulbs in the wrong way and that they were making their way to Australia. But, that wasn’t the case, and like a mad woman I ran out into the garden in the pitch black in my dressing gown, armed with a camera.

I call this photos… ‘Onion by Night”. Possibly art?
In other news, and more recent news, everything is growing like mad at the moment. I am wondering however if we are ever going to be able to eat any of these things before Christmas! Disappointingly we only seem to be having one out of the two pepper plants actually growing anything at the moment, but in contrast the strawberries, tomatoes and the broccoli are doing really well.

Oh and finally I also have to report that the random experiment is looking, well pretty random. We have had people saying that we may get potatoes off of it, and some have said we won’t – only time will tell!

We had a deal! I promised not to drown, salt, snip or splat in return for healthy un-munched produce. To my dismay at the weekend I noticed that the lettuce which had been safely perched off the ground on top of a plant pot, now had many more holes in it. True, the lettuces were not in the best state to start with, but they hadn’t been half eaten that’s for sure.

This is what I found!

‘How could you?!’ I cried

No response from the slug

‘Grrr’.
I ran into the house and grabbed the camera to collect photographic evidence. Still in a state of mild anger I then proceeded to prod them with the stick (known affectionately as the slug-o-pult) until they let go.

(By the way that huge hole in the slug wasn’t me – I think it’s a breathing hole or something.)

Anyway, we then had words about our deal.

So, although I was a little, ok well very unhappy, I did decide not to kill them but to ‘eject’ them from the garden using my slug-o-pult. It’s very easy to use, coax one slug onto the end of a stick, let it take hold, then draw back the arm and release with force.

I have to report that out of the two slugs that I managed to coax onto the slug-o-pult, only one actually made it over the fence to freedom, the other one made it to the fence and is currently still at large.

That aside I did feel bad for a split second as I heard the thud on the fence panel and I murmured ‘oops’, but it shouldn’t have munched my lettuce!

..…poor thing…sorry.

Despite my scepticism I have to report that the ‘random experiment’ is growing, and at a very fast rate, in fact it seems to be getting bigger every day. Consequently we have topped up the potato compost but it still seems to be shooting through. I can’t wait to see if we actually get any potatoes off of it, if anyone knows how long it will be before we can harvest the potatoes please leave a comment.

In other news we have also had our first strawberry! It was really nice and sweet, and probably all the sweeter because it came from our very own strawberry plant in our garden!

The strawberry plants are continuing to crop really well at the moment which is encouraging. In fact we have been told that we have another strawberry plant growing as there is and I quote, ‘a knuckle’. So you will be able to see that we have planted this shoot in another pot away from the Cultivation Station to see if we get another plant.

There comes a time when you think tiny things please tiny minds. I have to say that in my case, it’s true, because we have more shoots! Yes the spring onions have finally come through. Still waiting on the red onions but this is good, this is progress. Maybe the rain dance worked?

In other news we decided to plant up a Lucky Clover with the lettuces I mentioned in the previous post, there would have been more photos but Rich got distracted at the time.

The Lucky Clover does look nice planted up, but we are supposed to stack three planters together so I am currently thinking about what to plant in the

other two layers. Any suggestions do let me know!

Ok, so a busy weekend all round. Let’s begin with the Virgin Gardeners Top Gardening Tip!

Yes that’s right folks, the Clueless gardener has a top tip for you all.

Unless you want crop circles or squares for that matter, don’t leave bags of compost or grow bags on your lawn after planting.

I have exciting news, we have peppers! I really should have looked harder as they were hidden under the leaves, and are a decent size already. They seem to have sprouted from the flowers, which I didn’t realise would happen, and when I say ‘they’ I actually mean ‘it’.

In other exciting news we also have a broccoli shoot which looks like a mini clover.

I am so pleased with the progress so far as I was starting to worry after my dedicated watering that all the seeds we had planted were dead in some way. However I am still concerned about the rest of the seeds so I may have to try a rain dance or something and see if I can encourage them to grow.

We have had some lettuces donated to us so my mission this week is to get them planted up in a Lucky Clover. They look a bit dodgy in places, probably because we should have planted them sooner, but I am hoping they will perk up and the holes will fill up!

That can happen cant it?

Glad to report that the strawberries seem to be going red and they look lovely, I’d like to say good enough for Wimbledon, but there are only a couple of red ones at the moment.

Found a pet ladybird next to the strawberries that I have named Matilda, but she has since disappeared.

Do ladybirds eat your produce? I like ladybirds – I hope they are not a pest I wouldn’t want to kill them.

Everything else is looking pretty much the same, tomatoes have grown a bit, but still no news to report on the seeds that have been planted.

I am happy to report that all the plants are still alive.

But……I am unhappy to report we may have bugs!

Tending to the plants at the weekend I found little black bugs with wings. I’m pretty sure they are trying to eat our plants, the tomatoes being a particular favourite so they had to be exterminated with bug killer. I felt quite bad about it really, but having said that I felt that way about ants before I found them trying to nest in the house and then it was quite a different story.

Apart from that, all looks pretty quiet on the plant front, we have a nice bunch of strawberries appearing, and the tomatoes are continuing to grow, so I think it’s going to be a waiting game really.

Let me first outline the issue. Like most people we have snails and slugs in our garden, but I’m not naive and I know there will come a point when an elite squad of slimies will all jump on the Trojan horse and pile into our Cultivation Station to eat our beloved plants. And even though they are the slowest creatures on the planet, they will be gone by the morning.

So my argument is…to season or not to season…to salt or not to salt, get it, funny? No.. .ok I shall continue.

Now, I like snails but I don’t like slugs. Maybe that makes me prejudiced against the homeless, because I see slugs generally as homeless snails. That could be a debate in itself really, but anyway we digress.

So this weekend I decided we had to get some kind of snail/slug friendly trap, when I explained this to my dear other half, he laughed and said traps are built for speed, but as you and I both know this is not the case as there are elite forces at work.

So my options were

1. Beer. They like it so drown the poor things in it and they get drunk in the process and therefore die happy. That’s got to be ironic, dying happy, when was anyone happy when they died??
2. Season them, pour salt on them and watch them shrivel up like dried prunes. Now I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t like to shrivel up like a prune.
3. Leave them and hope they have a conscience and don’t eat the plants.
4. Scaresnails (like Scarecrows) Create a huge model slug and/or snail and hope it scares the rest away.
5. Copper tape. Produces a static charge when they pass over it – I think they would just enjoy it and carry on.
6. Pellets – They eat them and die (but not so keen with pets around).
7. Stand on as many as you can. I can’t do this, if I ever do this I always end up apologising to the crunchy squishy mess on the floor and feeling bad for the rest of the day.
8. Throw them in next doors garden. Not bad, not bad, getting better!
9. Skewer using a sharp blade on the end of a long stick (magazine tip). I really just couldn’t do that, I certainly would never look at kebabs in the same way ever again.
10. Pet Hedgehog -They can run faster than slugs and can sniff them out from 10 paces.

What do you think?

Now I have spoken to Daisyboots, who either uses pellets or salt to kill them and she enthuses ‘that they are not exactly a dying race and can afford to lose a few’. Strong words from the experienced one.

In the end what I actually got was a product from a local DIY chain, grit-like in substance which promises to deter slugs and snails from crossing its path. The idea is to pour a hex type symbol on the ground, obtain one sacrificial goat and undertake some chanting and dancing around the cultivation station and see if it works.

But I think a surrounding grit border will do just fine!

I’ll let you know how I get on.