I think that was my most challenging spring gardening season ever and I am so glad to finally have a few days of sunshine and warmth. (although I’m sure I will be complaining about the soil being too dry in about another week’s time.)

Fighting the pests

Between March and June, so many plants were damaged by a combination of slugs, deer, moles and the nepeta suffered from our new cat.

The deer and slugs where the most damaging and I was losing either whole plants or the entire flowering stems in some cases. This is particularly annoying as I am hoping that this will be the third and final year of quantifying bees on plants. The research objective now is to have sufficient data to compare the results in Monmouthshire with our previous data for the same plants in Oxfordshire. Being determined to battle this onslaught in the most nature-friendly way I found a combination of things worked and now we have flowers coming on most plants.

Here is the combination of techniques used:

Deer: I used solar bleep things you can buy online and also used plants supports and canes to make physical barriers

Slugs: I tried the wool-based pellets but found them to be useless, as are the ‘organic pellets’ however a mix of copper rings (expensive but good) and some wool from our own sheep once I had run out of them. Our friend Simon swears by midnight hunting with a head-torch but I am asleep by then.

Moles: the bleep things again although I am not sure they worked for moles so I have to accept that if I plant something where they have a channel below, it’s a going to get dug up.

Cat: he really only goes for one plant and that is the nepeta mussinii. I have the same trouble with this plant in the polytunnel and have to grow I in a cage. In the garden I have used upside down hanging-basket frames. This worked well till I found the slugs where also going for this one so had to add copper rings too.

The garden looked a bit messy for a while but now everything has grown you can no longer see the rings, sticks, etc. The border is now back to being my eternal source of pleasure