Slug wars

Slug Wars

Last year we have a slug problem they devoured a huge amount. This year I thought I'd sow so much more, with the theory being the slugs could have a third of it. 

Last night was the first warm night, around 11 deg C of the year and this morning young tomatoes and cucumbers that have been planted in the poly-tunnel have either gone totally or have leaves missing and are covered in slime.

Courgettes I potted up yesterday and left on the floor of the poly tunnel over night have already started losing leaves.

The pots I can move onto a table, but the ones outside under a cloche are devastated.  

Luckily slugs don't like onions, or so I keep reading. If you enlarge the photo by clicking on it there is slime all over the soil and half a row of spring onions are almost totally eaten, even the tops of larger ones show damage.

There are a few beer traps in the poly tunnel and although they have the odd slug in them they aren't working. Perhaps slugs don't like Carling Black Label.

In the courgette bed outside there are 8 beer traps and they have caught one slug last night.

Today, I have just ordered some Slug Nematode. They are expensive and we have too much growing space to use everywhere but I will try some in the poly tunnel.

We have to get on top of this problem because there are only so many pots and so much space to keep plants in pots until they are big enough to face slugs....and I have already reached that point where some things could do with going out.

A row of peas sown direct have also been eaten by slugs just as they poked their heads above the soil and another row of peas that were raised indoors and then transplanted out have now lost most of their lower leaves. Last year virtually all Runner and French beans were eaten.

There are also news stories about slugs being worse this year as the winter wasn't cold enough for them to hibernate causing them to carry on eating and breeding through the winter....

Runner beans and a small flood

Runner beans and a small flood

Last year the runner beans were a disaster. Slugs ate all but 1 or 2 before they could start climbing. I'm determined that this year will be different and so started sowing at the beginning of April inside the greenhouse. Over the last 4 or so days they have been left outside in the cold frame with the lid off for the last 2 and there has been 2 ground frosts, neither of which have been bad.

The last few years our last frosts have been in the first week of May and I've always had runner beans out and have never had any problems with the cold but with this years crop starting earlier I have sown direct into the ground 1 seed at each pole plus now planted half the poles with young plants. I have also sown a load more in the green house.

All poles have a bean sown direct and 20 poles also have young plants.

Although we have had 2 frosts recently neither days / nights saw the air temperature drop below 1.5 deg C so I'm guessing the ground temp barely dropped to freezing but I have attempted to build some protection for them made from corrugated  clear plastic. It'll keep the wind off of them and may perhaps just hold that little bit of warmth in for an extra hour or so. 

Being earlier in the year by a few weeks there are less slugs around at the moment so I'm hopeful these beans may just get climbing before the slugs become a problem.

Luckily we have been given a load of pots so if all else fails then I can pot up a load of beans and get them a foot tall or so before planting out. I have loads of seeds this year to throw at the problem and still plenty of time in which to sow them. Fingers crossed.

Mini Flood

Despite digging drainage, channelling water into 2 ponds, having loads of grass to expire water, hundreds of plants, dozens of young Willow trees and a couple of dozen fruit trees, about 60 hedging trees and having raised the ground in a few areas we still have a boggy little field. I knew we had a small issue with water where we placed the Poly-tunnel but this last week saw a lot of rain and the Poly-tunnel had a inch of water on the floor. The trellis bed next to it also was totally full of water and my young wild flowers that have only just germinated were in danger of drowning if I didn't do something.

When we get around to building an extension we'll need a soak away so I've taken the opportunity to site this and started digging. So far I've only just removed the top 4 inches of turf, plus dug a little soil (clay) out but it was enough to drain the bed and most of the Poly-tunnel.

 A small channel from the trellis bed filled the hole as I dug away the turf. It had drained a bit by the time the photo was taken but it did lower the water in the bed and tunnel so that the roots of the seedlings aren't constantly in water.

This hole is still full of water several days later and will take the week to drain. I have to hope that when dug much deeper I find less clay and hopefully chalk otherwise it won't be a soak away but more a sump.

Many other veg beds around the garden still have the water sitting just a few inches below the surface. Most main beds are raised so this isn't an issue but every fruit tree is in effect planted in a bucket made of clay and therefore is sitting in water. As long as we don't have too much heavy rain in the next few weeks it'll be fine.

The turfs will be put to good use in the chicken pen, given them grass in the bare parts but also raising the ground to avoid their flooding problem.

Update - the day after
Plan A with the runner beans may not have lasted very long. Hard frost last night with air temps down to -1.5 so ground temp would have been lower. Will be interesting to see if they survive.

Seeds Sown and more trees brought

Seeds sown and more trees bought

Some wild flower seed sown around poly tunnel, 150 Centurion Onions set, Carrot sown and trenches for potatoes have been started with Leek, Brussels, Tomatoes, Oak Leaf Lettuce, Peas sown in the green house. These were done over the last week or two and Peas and Brussels have already started.

Yesterday, Sweetcorn, Strawberry Spinach, Sweet Peppers, Broad Beans and more Tomato were sown in the Poly tunnel. Hopefully others will be done today.

It's full steam ahead now and the last chance to buy bare rooted trees taken with 10 more Hazel, a Peach, Nectarine and a Cambridge Gage tree ordered along with Hop seed.

Sweet Chestnuts

The Sweet Chestnuts that I planted as seed in a grow bag, with the hope that one or two might germinate and grow has seen most of them germinate. I think I sowed about 20 and perhaps 15 may grow. I had been told that mice would almost certainly get them over winter if I left them outside in a grow bag but that hasn't happened. 

Fruit Bush cuttings

The Red and Black Currant cuttings I took late Autumn seem to be growing. They have fresh buds on them as well as the Gooseberry cuttings. It looks like all have taken. I had simply cut them (old and new wood) and stuck them in pots with compost and left them outside. If they work then this will be something I'll do a lot more of as it was so easy. Reading about taking cuttings the books make it sound quite complicated, cut here with x number of buds after leaves fall, cut at this angle, plant and keep moist using rooting hormone and if the conditions are kept correct they should take. In reality all I did was cut small branches with and without leaves and stick them in a pot of what ever was to hand and left them. I rather wish I had done another 20.

Poly Tunnel
The tunnel went in last October but the high winds damaged the cover so for most of the winter the cover was off until a few weeks ago when we replaced it with a new one, not before putting up some trellis along one side and a bit of the front. Hopefully the trellis should reduce the wind by 20 or 30% and remove the danger of damage. This last week has seen temperatures top 25 deg C inside the tunnel when the sun shines for any length of time and with overcast days it's around 10 or 12 deg C.  

Mushrooms and Poly Tunnel

Mushrooms and Poly Tunnel

Earlier on in the year I tried growing mushrooms.

Previous posts:

Mushroom Part 1

Mushroom part 2

I didn't think that the temperature was right and gave up on them but over the last couple of days they have appeared. I say they but more correctly "it" appeared.

One mushroom has grown:

It shows that it worked but hasn't exactly been a great success. I think I'll put the idea of growing mushrooms outdoors to the back of my mind for now :)

The poly tunnel on the other hand is going great. Everything is growing strongly even to the point where a harvest can now be taken from the salad leaves. The Spring Onions have germinated as well as the radish. The garlic, although not showing yet has grown some roots and is about to poke through the soil and the field beans sown in a corner to see if they will fruit earlier than outdoors have started to grow.

(Click to enlarge pictures)

On the left the Oak leaf lettuce and Mizuna are going very well as is the beetroot, on the right the Chard and Pak Choi are also growing very strongly.

In the middle the Spinach, Radish, Garlic, Spring Onion, Strawberry and Chinese Cabbage are doing just as well.

What is immediately noticeable is that none of the leaves have been nibbled so everything is looking perfect. The Cape Gooseberry has even flowered. It's only been a few weeks since we put the Poly Tunnel in (see: Poly Tunnel Post) but the extra warmth and humidity has made a big difference as has the fact that it hasn't needed watering much since the humidity and lack of a drying wind has kept the soil moist. The roof of the Tunnel collects water droplets and automatically waters the beds as well, which is a nice bonus.

Today has been a rather breezy day but the Tunnel's plastic isn't noticing the wind much which bodes well for the much windier days ahead. This week the max temp reached 30 deg C and the minimum went down to 1.2 deg C so no frosty conditions inside the tunnel even though a few people have commented that they have had a ground frost in the area. It is now noticeable that the day time sun is not effective enough to warm the soil to keep the night time temp higher than the outside by the end of the night and I think that after a few hours of darkness any residual heat has dissipated by midnight.

My next job, and probably tonight, will be to put a heater inside set to the anti-frost setting, on for 2 hours from midnight to see if that will keep the inside temp a degree or two above the outside temp. The tunnel is probably too big for the heater to raise the temperature enough so that it can turn off the heat. If it fails to heat up quickly and be able to turn off then it will be a waste of time as the cost of the electricity will be a waste of energy but it's worth a test. A 2 kW heater on for 2 hours is going to cost 26p a night but if it can manage to do it's job and only be on for 45 minutes then at under 10p a night it might just extend the growing season for a few more weeks before the proper cold weather sets in. Once the proper cold spell starts the idea of a heater becomes silly, price and energy wastage wise but if the plants can just be allowed to grow for another 2 weeks then the amount of salad leaves we get and can sell will make it worth while. The same will apply at the end of the winter. If we can get the temperature up by just a degree or 2 during the night late February and the day time sun starts to heat the tunnel then we might get a months head start on some crops for next year. If we can sell the leaves (as we currently do) a couple of weeks later and a few weeks earlier than the other Alford Country Market growers then we'll have one month per year being the only one selling these products and therefore no competition.

One of the problems with selling home grown produce is that when winter starts the customers will be forced back into the super markets to buy their greens for juicing. By postponing that by a few weeks you can keep them loyal for longer and they can keep their habit of buying from us. By starting to sell the greens earlier in the new year using a poly tunnel we will have more time to pull them back in and get them back in the habit of buying locally again before the main season starts.I can see the possibility that once the regular customers go back to the supermarket over winter they may not start to come back to the country market by the time we start selling again but if we have some of what they want before the start of the main season we can start to grab them back one by one slowly so they are already on the look out and thinking about the country market when our main produce starts coming through. Instead of being a slow start to the main season we may be able to get up to full speed selling quicker....anyway, if we don't try we'll never find the thing that works for us :)

Still hoping that the money and time spent on the poly tunnel will pay big dividends.