SLUGS AND SNAILS AND SPIDERSQUIRREL

So what does a green gardener do about snails and slugs?

Options - slug bait - not on, nematodes are much hassle and expense and how green is infecting the poor molluscs with nasty parasites? Then there is the squash 'em idea - mmm! Lastly bucket - pick them up, pop in a bucket and take them a long way away. If you only go a hundred yards they will return. Lastly cultivate blackbirds and thrushes but they can only stomach so much food, sadly.

Of course having toads and frogs in the garden is a bonus but there seems a never-ending supply of the slimy veg. eaters.

Our wet climate and mild winters are not good news - when we had the two hard winters the numbers especially of slugs was much reduced.

Last year I had slugs feeding on the runner beans eight feet off the ground!

My brother as a small boy would line up slugs on the ground and walk on them with bare feet - not a control method that would appeal to most people.

Let me move on - caterpillars - butterflies are beautiful and we have our nettles for the peacocks, red admirals etc and garlic mustard (Jack-by-the-hedge) for the Orange tips but the whites are a problem on the brassicas. Does one rub off the eggs and if caterpillars are removed do you squash them or throw them as far from you as possible hoping they will go elsewhere?

Poor old vegetables have a rough time but, I think, I have found a way to avoid carrot root fly. I knock out the bottoms of big plastic containers - the sort you can buy pelleted hen manure in - and place on fertile soil, fill with a sandy loam and sow into the top. The sneaky fly zooms along like a cruise missile just above the soil surface but misses my carrots nine inches up in the air.

Well, it has worked so far.

I use lots of netting to keep the pigeons off the seedlings, the birds off the redcurrants, the butterflies off the broccoli and so on. Keeping the wood mice out is another thing altogether and they just munch away.

Now to SPIDERSQUIRREL - I have discovered why we have no fledgling house martins. This morning I looked up at the nest 7 metres up under the east end gable and there, clinging to the wall was a squirrel. It ran down the wall (coloured render) and around the corner at two metres from the ground with me giving vociferous chase.

How does it hold onto the wall?

So it is either a gun or a trap - I have bought a trap - or should I let nature take its course and the house martins lose their young, let alone all the other birds in the garden.

A trap - and garden, no matter what its description may be, is a managed space and I am not a killer. So trap them and deport them - a long way away.

I know you will say that other squirrels will come in to fill the vacant space - true - but they are going to get deported too.

And I promise to release them well away from any garden.