Most Successful Crop So Far

Is slugs and snails.

Last night I picked a variety of slugs and snails - various shapes and sizes from the really big, fat ones with orange stripes down the sides, leopard spotted ones, to little, grey-brown ones and then a whole host of normal garden snails - who were all munching away happily on courgettes, what's left of my beans and any that were working their way between or around the two.

I even pulled one out from the centre of what's left of a hosta that's been valiantly trying to regrow it's leaves.

Mean Green Chomping Machines

The Square Foot Garden is having a hard time this year - what with the wind, rain, cold and generally un-summer-like weather and then to top it all, I walked out this morning to head off to an early morning meeting to find an array of snails all over what's left of the runner beans. After I'd been away for a couple of days, I came back to find some of the plants had been reduced to just stalks. They've been slowly demolishing them and as fast as I pick them off, the quicker they appear. I spent a quick five minutes picking them off and added another dozen or so to the bucket and a few more when I returned a couple of hours later. It's going to have to be a daily vigil while I desperately try to coax enough to survive so that I get at least a few runner beans this year - but it's not looking too hopeful.

The mangetouts never got going and have totally disappeared. The lettuce I planted out a couple of weeks ago have amazingly enough survived quite well so far and are growing fast.

Two Days Away

Returned from a weekend in Wales to find that the garden has survived, (there was enough rain to keep it watered) although the snails have been at the runner beans and four plants have been reduced to nothing more than stalks and stems and the rest are looking bedraggled and a bit sorry for themselves. They've also had a chomp at the pepper plants on the patio - little blighters!

Only one slightly overgrown courgette and the rest yet to come. They really only look as if they're getting going now and are still very small.

Still picking spinach which is getting a bit straggly. The rocket went to seed ages ago but has some very attractive white flowers that I've just left, having planted some more seed which doesn't seen to have gone anywhere.

Picked a good half punnet of blueberries, which seem to be ripening up much more slowly this year and not in one great flush. Lovely big berries on one bush which seem to get large the longer they're left and it's more prolific that the other one.