SLUGS!

A few days sunshine meant that I was able to get into the garden in full force over the weekend. My tidying up revealed that while I had been sheltering from the rain so too had hundreds of slugs and snails! There were clearly too many for even my greediest of hedgehog friends and so further help was needed in order to protect my plants from being eaten alive!

Beer is a traditional slug trap - simply fill an old tin can with a malty-smelling beer and set them at close intervals around the garden. To avoid killing beneficial ground beetles don't set them flush with the soil. A slug will happily climb, a ground beetle won't. If like me you'd rather enjoy the beer yourself you can use a mixture of flour, water and yeast in traps instead. Remember to mix up a new batch every day or so.

Another environmentally friendly way to catch them is to use the rinds of grapefruit, lemons and even potatos. Set the rinds, upside down in the ground where you've seen the slugs. Early in the morning lift the rinds up and you'll hopefully have a collection of slugs underneath, either kill your slugs (by crushing them) or give birds a treat and place them on the bird table.

Another trick is to use copper. Copper reacts with the slimey path of snails and slugs and gives them a rather nasty shock! You can buy copper wire and tape from your garden centre, like St Bridget Nurseries in Exeter, along with slug traps for use with beer.

Oh and don't forget a pair of gardening gloves - slugs are very sticky to touch!