Growing in an environmentally friendly way means we allow nature to share the land and the produce. The ever-challenging task is to manage it in such a way that there is something left to harvest without killing everything that is a threat.

Our current sharing neighbours are.

• Pigeons – they like the greens and young plants
• Rabbits – anything new they can get their teeth into
• Moles – in hot weather they will tunnel under plants as the soil is moist and full of worms.
• Mice and Voles – eat germinating seeds and young leaves and stems.
• Caterpillars – the first moth caterpillars have been seen and there are now regular sightings of butterflies so monitoring of brassicas has started.
• Ants in the polytunnel are not too much of a problem but they do undermine the roots of plants. 
• Flea beetles – these little critters are responsible for the small round holes in your leafy greens. An observation this year is that they seem to be less around, it may be because there are more birds on the field.
• Pheasants and partridge – attempt to give the growers a heart attack by flying out from under their feet. So far, we’ve identified 3 nests and seen two successful hatches.

Other challenges are the number of birds nesting in the long grass and comfrey meaning we must be careful when clearing areas.

And of course, THE SLUG

We have an abundance of slugs on the field. It can be said that they are an indicator of how rich and healthy the ground is and how close we are to having a balanced growing environment.

HAH- I bet you weren’t expecting me to say that!

Not all slugs are bad, some are crucial to the breakdown of dead and decaying matter and some slugs are predators of other slugs. Then there are the bad guys, you know who they are, you’ve seen them often enough – unfortunately.

As I write, 1^st week in June, they are multiplying en-masse, warm soil cool nights with sufficient dew to sustain them. We are currently only relying on the local bird population to keep them down.

In the past we have used slug pellets particularly the iron phosphate ones which are not as poisonous as the old metaldehyde ones, but now only in very severe infestations under cover or in the cold frame. We used to use beer traps, but they also trapped beetles which eat slugs – and nobody liked cleaning out the gooey mess.

Beware! If I’m in a bad mood I might ask people to go round picking slugs out from under rocks or planks of wood (then picking thistles and nettles!)

Now our preferred method is the use of nematodes. We buy in nematodes in June and put them in a barrel of water and sprinkle this water over young or susceptible plants as they are planted out. The barrel is topped up with clean water. A raft is placed in the barrel with some slugs and lettuce to encourage the nematodes to recolonise the barrel of water.

We top up the barrel with bought in supply if we feel that its efficacy has dropped, or the slugs are winning again- or if we hear the lettuces have extra protein in again!

Ian