The brown slug (Arion ater) that I thought had been eaten by a bird has re-appeared, or perhaps it’s not the same, as I see another shortly after. The former is about as long as my middle finger, plump as a chipolata. The back half of its body has ridges rather like a fingerprint, but I can’t see any purpose …

Last Sunday, for the first time since 2019, we had music again in the garden. About 40 people turned up to hear Lucky Thomas playing his pan (or steel drum as you might know it as). Lucky played a mixture of reggae and popular tunes in a rhythm that made one think of Jamaica and Carnival. Lucky has been very …

Last Sunday Forest Gate had a month’s rain in a few hours. I checked this by measuring with a ruler the water collected in a tin bath that’s in the garden. You can’t put one freak weather event down to climate change, but climate change makes such events more frequent, with the outliers becoming more usual. Sunday’s rain hammered down …

On Wednesday evening I came into the garden to water the plants, only to find the tap not working due to a fault on Gateway’s site next door. The garden was gasping, plants in pots wilting after a week of hot, dry weather. With watering cans we do what we can, using what is in our rain barrels, but are …

There remain tadpoles in the pond even in mid July. Some have left, others are almost frogs with froggy heads and limbs and the tail yet to be absorbed. Others are tadpole-like but with the addition of hind legs. Having got this far, will these tadpoles continue on to full frogdom? I am not sure and will keep watching. And …

We’ve had lots of rain recently which means lots of growth, in spite of temperatures being on the low side. In the wildflower bed are red and yellow poppies in profusion. The individual flowers don’t last long but others follow in succession. There’s blue borage, cornflowers, and wild carrot, which looks very like cow parsley but the seed ends up …

What to do about the snails which are attacking the butternut squash and sunflowers in the square raised bed? I put copper coated mesh around the edge of the bed. It didn’t work; there were snail trails across it. I tried coffee grounds, that didn’t work either. In the meantime, I have been utilising plastic bottles, buckets and containers to …

All the Americana plants are in place, a display of food plants that originated on the American continent. Most were brought to Europe by Spanish and Portuguese explorers in the late 15th and early 16th centuries. A spin-off in the conquistadors’ main quest for gold, land, and dominion.   The plants on display are (see photo): Top row: maize, sweet …

  The scourers did not work as a snail barrier (see last week’s blog). A few days after putting them on the sides of the raised bed, the butternut squash and sunflowers were attacked by snails. Some of the smaller sunflower seedlings were chomped away completely, while the butternut squash has suffered damage to its leaves. You would think the …

Snails. Wet weather increases their number, and we had the rainiest May, followed by a few days of sunshine, and then a deluge last Friday. I came in on Saturday to look at Americana, our display of food plants from the continent of America. And the snails had been at them. Snails are very selective. Some plants they’ll leave alone, …