Fruit, Veg, Flowers and Slugs

I have touched upon the subject of wildlife friendly gardening in the past on this blog and in the column I write for the Romford Recorder. It is a subject I feel quite strongly about and would, and do, encourage everybody to garden with wildlife in mind as much as possible.   I am writing this piece having just spent half-an-hour watching the Blue Tits dart back and forth across the garden to and from the nest box in which there are clearly a number of hungry mouths to feed. It is very satisfying to watch them pop their heads out of the next box and fly straight to the Runner Bean bed, where they are clearly finding plenty of little beasties to feed to their young, and fly straight back to the nest. At this time of year you do need to remember to check your plants for Aphids such as Greenfly and Blackfly and rub off any you find before they become an infestation. There are hundreds of products on the market to deal with Aphids but the easiest, quickest and most environmentally friend

Wildlife Friendly Gardening is a very popular search term on the internet these days and actually quite trendy; plenty of column inches have been printed in magazines and newspapers on the subject as well.  I have always tried to garden with wildlife in mind, I suppose it goes back to tricks my old Grandad and Dad both taught me down the years. People talk about Companion Planting and Plants for Pollinators as if it is a recent discovery but I can remember my Grandad using these tricks back in the seventies when I was no more than knee high to him and I am sure he had been doing the same things for years before that.  Wildlife friendly Pest Control is an issue that can cause confusion - how do you get rid of the pests you don't want whilst attracting the insects, birds and mammals you do? Down the years there have been a few weird and wonderful practices undertaken by gardeners. As a child, perhaps no more than five or six-years-old, I remember watching my Grandad sprinkling salt a