[mccardey]

I found this site by accident (I was looking for hints on a nice way to discourage slugs from scoffing all my zucchini) - and the site looks so lovely and friendly I stayed for an hour and had to promise myself I could come back later.

I have a fair-sized garden (about 1/4 acre), but a big problem finding a spot that isn't shaded for most of the day. We have some ancient trees which can't be cut down (and I'd be sorry to lose them) but that means I'm restricted to two or three plots of about three feet square. I have a glasshouse (a bit wonky now, a tree fell on it and bent the frame) and I bring things on in there and plant them out a few weeks later. I grow a lot of beans. I sow a lot of other things as well, but what I mostly end up with is beans.

Now I really have to go to work.

[Rosemary]

Hi and welcome to teh TAS forums. Great to have someone from far, far away!

Where about in Oz are you?

[carole]

Hi
Welcome to the forum from me too.

Carole

[MurmuringWheel]

Welcome from me too.

Have you tried putting wool (fleece) around your plants to keep the slugs off? The gardeners in the family assure me it does work.

[Francis Bacon]

Hi & Welcome to the other side of the world 

My friend says that egg shells work really well or why not try beer traps using g'old Australian lager, We have friends in Castlemaine 

[mccardey]

All these good ideas!! Thank you all     I'm going to be scientific - I have three tiny beds and I'll try the coffee grounds on one, the egg shells on another and a beer trap (though it does seem a shocking waste....) on the third. And I'll report back. I don't have fleece, but I do have a surfeit of cavalier King Charles Spaniel hair that I use to keep possums away from the glasshouse. Would that work as well? 

I'll try it and let you know.

It rained all day yesterday (it's supposed to be Spring down here) but I went out anyway with the first of the coffee grounds. You'd all have been very proud.


I suppose you chaps are all heading into winter now....  I hope you get the kind of winter you enjoy best.

[MurmuringWheel]

I don't have fleece, but I do have a surfeit of cavalier King Charles Spaniel hair that I use to keep possums away from the glasshouse. Would that work as well? 

Don't know, some people think it's the texture that puts them off, which means it should work, but some think it's the lanolin in the fleece in which case, probably not.

Like you say, try it and see what happens.

Good luck,
Diane

[pigsatlesrues]

The lovely think about this forum is that it is so international.  A wonderful warm welcome from Normandy and please send some of your sunshine over here!!

Kate 

[mccardey]

This is a lovely side-effect of the whole gardening thing. We got two chickens the other day, and today our newst neighbours who speak very little English and have a vegetable garden to DIE for dropped by to see if a) that really was the sound of happy chickens they'd heard and b)  we'd like to do swaps of eggs for some of their Asian greens. Or anything else they grow.

Isn't that just - gorgeous    (x3)

Okay, its not a smallholding really, but between their sunny garden, my glasshouse and our chooks we're practically a FARM!!!!!!!!!!!   

[Rosemary]

That's just brilliant!

[mccardey]

Isn't it, though? And this morning the greengrocer's delivery boy who is rather taken with the idea of chickens in suburban Sydney, offered to leave me a box of outer-leaves every morning.      Aren't people nice?  So once the chickens have paid off the costs of their fencing, in say about three hundred and forty years, we really will be getting Free Eggs!!!

*smugness*

[garden cottage]

squash em with a rolf harris wobbleboard, mate

[mccardey]

The slugs - not the chickens.....  presumably

[danndans]

hiya mccardey, from rainy wales 

[garden cottage]

hi mccardey,have you seen post on vegetable section slugs slugs slugs, check out greenfingers reply re natural bran and rustys re planks near veg. all the best neil