How does your garden grow?

I think the fact that my garden is baring fruit must be testimony that anyone can grow something to eat in their garden. I have muddled and bluffed my way through the whole gardening process so am delighted that I am finally able to eat the fruits of my labour.

One thing I have learned from the experience so far is how helpful people can be. I never imagined that I would be one of those people who could comfortably chat about gardening, whether it be how the slugs have attacked my beans or how proud I am of my squash plants, I am able to converse on gardening for a very long time. The tips and advice you can pick up are invaluable. I can even thank my social networking friends for their continual support. I wouldn't have a garden without them.

The potatoes are a constant delight to me. I can't wait until it's time to dig them up, I just can't get over how well they have grown without much care and attention, specially as they were grown from a bag of sprouting potatoes that I didn't get around to cooking.

My one disappointment is that I seem to have pretty much failed to grow anything really successfully from seed. I obviously need to do a bit more reading in that area. I have, as I mentioned before three great squash plants, a pea plant and a bean plant. There are two beetroot seedlings also still struggling on. Luckily I have been given plants by other enthusiastic gardeners who have managed to propagate a few too many for their own consumption. Last week my bean seeds from Glenisk and the Organic Centre arrived, hopefully by following their instructions to the letter I will finally have my own bean plants grown from seed.

From the garden I have already been able to enjoy; lettuce, which I've been eating almost every day, although it has gone to seed now there is still plenty of eating left in it. Herbs, which again I am using everyday. The Rosemary, Bay leaves, Parsley and chives have been used in casseroles, dumplings, salad dressings and more.

I am watching my first courgette daily, and am planning a recipe for it when it that will bring out the flavour fully. I also have a number of beans growing and a single pea pod which I am looking forward to harvesting.

My Mint plant however doesn't look too healthy. It has turned yellow with black spots on many of the leaves. I have asked for expert opinion and it seems I could have been over watering it. I've got my fingers crossed that it survives.

Slug Control the social network way.

When ever I talk to other gardeners the conversation inevitably turns to slugs. Even when the veg garden was just a twinkle in my eye I was warned constantly of the slug threat. So now that my plants are beginning to grow and I have noticed that some of them seem to be depreciating due to slug attack I decided it was time to take action.

I've also been using social networking sites for a while to promote my business. We have a Facebook page where people can become fans of Feelgood Organic Hampers and we have two twitter accounts, one purely business and one personal where I generally talk about the everyday comings and goings in the office, the garden and the Kitchen. So I decided to ask my social networks for assistance in slug control.

The response was great. On Twitter @elainerogers was by far the most prolific with bundles of suggestions including beer traps, Vaseline around flower pots: '...they can't slime over slime.', companion planting with Allysum, Begoinia, Cosmos, Geranium, Lobelia and Nasturtiums, and going out at twilight to gather and rehouse them. @helentreacy suggested crushed egg shells around the base of the plants @scottbert suggested stamping on them, but I don't see me doing that... plus if I stamped on them I'd probably crush the plants too!

On Facebook Rochelle Harris mentioned that in his book 'A Short History of Almost Everything' Bill Bryson suggests that slugs were or are a form of plant life. The only evidence I could find to support this was on a sea slug forum which suggests that these aren't slugs in the sense that we think of them.

Pauline Price suggested digging the ground with a copper spade and this wasn't the only time that copper was mentioned, Carla Knight and Jeff Jenkins both suggested making copper wire fences. Jeff did also suggest attempting to train the slugs with slug treats and whistles but this sounds like a lot of work! Sian Maloney also suggested beer traps and Elaine Rogers (yes the same one from Twitter) gave me directions on how to make the beer trap safe for beetles. Lesley Emerson thought I should cut them up with scissors... I don't think I could bring myself to do this though, I'd rather think they died happy swimming in a beer lake or a Bulmers lake as suggested by Rosy Days. Beverly Martin suggested hair and Ian Vince suggested making collars for the plants out of empty plastic bottles.

Armed with all this knowledge I began to assemble my arsenal. I had been collecting egg shells for a while as I had been told they were a powerful deterrent, I had also been collecting coffee grinds as a gardening friend had suggested them to me last year. I raided my recycling bin for empty plastic bottles and began to turn them into spiky collars. These were going to form part one of my assault against the slugs.

In the garden I surrounded different plants with different methods, some were too big for the collars so I used these to protect the smallest and most venerable plants, the bigger ones were surrounded by circles of crushed egg shells and coffee. The only problem I could see with the egg shells is that when I watered the some of them washed away. I'd want to be eating a lot of eggs to keep the area covered.

I'm going in with the phase two 'beer traps' soon. Watch this space....