I asked a similar question on Twitter the other day but since I’ve lost more leaves to the blighters over the weekend, I thought I’d asked for more suggestions – I want to belt & braces it!

In response to my Twitter question, @KakeLover replied: “beer traps! gets the slugs everytime!” and @maryhoresh said “this year trying egg shells they aren’t supposed to like waking over them.also heard to paint glitter around edge of pots”.

So I’ve got beer traps down (made from old drinks cans, filled with out-of-date beer), John on order to eat eggs for breakfast and if I can find some glitter, I’ll make my pots into disco pots. I’ve also heard they don’t like copper (they’re supposed to get a little electric shock from it) but I don’t have enough old copper pipes to go around – will see what I can dig up though.

Any other suggestions? What have you tried? I’ve heard introducing certain parasitic nematodes can kill off slugs for a short time – anyone had any experience with that?

We’ve had an email from Lieze:

how can i recycle an old jerry can in a creative way ?

Lieze doesn’t say whether it’s an old school pressed steel one or a newfangled plastic one – or whether it’s been used as a fuel container or a water one.

My first thought for anything container shaped at the moment is “plant pot” (has anyone else had a scarily successful germination rate for their seedlings this year?!) but I think I’d be hesitant to use an old fuel canister for that, even if I could work out a way to make the opening bigger. Anyway, that’s not particularly creative so … I don’t know – maybe if you can slice off the front off a metal one, you could attach hinges and make it into a fun storage cabinet. (I love the idea of it being painted bright pink for the juxtaposition with the cold, industrial metal ;) )

Any other suggestions?

(Photo courtesy of Wikipedia)

I’ve been getting more and more interested in wild food lately – we’ve been trying different things while walking the dog in the woods behind our house and on Sunday, we went on a wonderful Wild Food Foray organised by Slow Food West Yorkshire. Led by medical herbalist Jesper Launder, we spent just over three hours pottering around the River Wharfe just north of Barden Bridge and tasted more than a dozen different plants, and also went crayfishing (for nasty invasive signal crayfish) – which was a lot of fun. (I’m going to do a full write up of all the things we tasted on my personal blog soon.)

Anyway, long & short of it is, between wild food collecting and the hopefully bountiful harvest from our garden, a trug would be really useful for carrying stuff back up to the house – a Sussex trug style basket like the one pictured rather than those big rubbery plastic bins with handles. Up to now, I’ve mostly just either taken so few leaves that I could easily carry them in my hands or used shopping bags/a colander when I’ve headed down to get a larger amount of, say, wild garlic – but a trug would be useful for carrying large amounts of longer things, letting them lie flat instead of crunching them up.

One recycled trug idea I’ve seen is made using an old car tyre – the tyre is cut into sections (sixths?) and rope handles are attached, et voila! instant trug. I’ve also seen old fruit/veg boxes made into trugs with addition of a central handle.

But before I start hacking up John’s spare, I thought it might be interesting to hear if anyone has any other suggestions. Might something like paper mache even work? It doesn’t need to be that strong and I guess it could be varnished/painted enough to make it waterproof enough (it wouldn’t be sitting out in the rain but the plants might be damp/dewy.)

Any other ideas?

We’ve had an email from Linda:

i want to use the water from my hot tub on the garden, it is a great waste to just put it down the drain. the water has chlorine in it.

if i drain the water into water butts, is there any way i can remove the chlorine from it to make it safe to water my garden?

This isn’t something I know a lot about – I know people use filters to remove the chlorine from tap water but that’s in a lot lower and smaller quantities than a hot tub.

So anyone with more watery experience got any ideas?

(Photo by allygirl520)

We’ve had an email from Bruce:

I’ve got a large amount of chicken wire leftover after conducting some work in my garden. The biggest 1ft by 2ft, the rest smaller. Can I recycle them in my can bin?

While it certainly could be recycled as scrap metal, it might cause problems further down the can recycling line if you add it to your recycling bin, particularly if your recycling is sorted by machinery. If that bin is your only way of getting it into the recycling system, it might be worth contacting the recycling people at your local council and seeing what they advise (every council is different). Other than that, roaming scrap metal collectors are becoming more common again and most tips/household waste and recycling centres have scrap metal bins.

What about reuses? If you’ve got room to store it, it could be used for patching holes in the future and I know many sculptors use it to make wire frames for their work too. Other suggestions?

(Photo by Elné Burgers