Slugs meet their Doom

After having a laugh last night at the comment Leonie left me at how her hubby wasn't impressed at the idea of having ducks to solve her slug problem :))....I promised I would share with her our slug trap that Mike makes up for attracting and sending those slimy critters to their doom!

The only thing you need is a milk bottle or similar, a sharp knife to cut it and some dregs of your hubby's beer.....hopefully he's obliging!

 As you can see the cabbages were getting devoured.....as for the spring onions that was the lambs taste testing!

Simply cut a little window two thirds of the way down and leave the flap as shown, fill with beer or if you don't have that you can make your own yeast solution, though we found it took a day before it was effective.  Dig it in a bit to anchor it and voila! once the beers in there you'll be attracting slugs near and far to fall into a drunken oblivion.  And in our house we always have an abundance of milk bottles, so everytime one is emptied it's pretty effortless to make another slug trap for the garden.

But CAUTION!! 

And I really mean this!  

Empty regulary or beware next time you empty it.

 If you do forget I strongly recommend doing so, at the end of the garden.....down wind.... and holding your breath RUN!!

Stale beer and dead slugs make for a wicked stench.

But saying that, it's really effective :)

Also another one is sprinkling used coffee grounds around your worst effected plants, the caffiene is a natural deterent to slugs.  

Mum gets ours from a local cafe, but if you already have quite acidic soil use it sparingly as it does make it more acidic if you use it to often.....so it may be best to save it for protecting your young seedlings.

But since we're on the subject of gardening and recycling I thought I'd show you our climbing bean and pea tunnel.......actually to be honest any excuse would have sufficed!

Mike had a whole sheet and a half of reinforcing mesh and some rebar left over from the concrete pad we just did, and came up with this tunnel for me.  

I'm super happy with it and I'm looking forward to seeing how this is going to look at the height of summer!  I've underplanted with some Calendula's aswell, so it should look lovely.....oooooh an edible tunnel!  Doesn't take much to excite me these days!

Now I just need to get Mike to hang the gate and fix the fence posts and it will look a treat.

Oh and tonight the boys and I tried artichokes for the first time.

 Mike ( my ex chef ) topped and tailed and boiled them in lemon juice and water, and served them with garlic butter! Yum all around!

Which is good because their are a heap of flower buds on these plants....and I've planted them everywhere