Nemaslug is the answer to all gardener’s prayers. A simple and effective way to kill slugs. It works for up to 6 weeks.
Nemaslug slug killer available at Unwins

It arrived on it’s own and should be placed in the fridge as soon as possible. It needs to be stored chilled as it contains live organisms called nematodeas.

Look on the inside packet for the date. Each pack has an expiry date by which you need to have used it.

You can use it outside from March until October – this is when slugs are active.. You can use it indoors inside your greenhouse during the winter months in addition to March – October as you may well have slugs living in the cosy warm of your greenhouse soil!

As any gardener who’s ever suffered the disappointment of finding seedlings all eaten, the slugs are one of the worst pests in the garden. To be able to eliminate them is the dream of most gardeners.

Applying the nemotodes is fairly straight forward. You should however wait until early evening to apply – so that there’s no strong sunlight about. Ideally the soil needs to stay moist for at least two weeks after you’ve put it on. This could mean a lot of watering if it doesn’t rain.

Go outside and find your watering can. It should have markings on the side – virtually all large ones do! You need to fill to the 2 Gallons level. Add one quarter of the packet to this and make sure it’s mixed up well. It’s easier to put in if you have a watering can with a large opening at the top. If you don’t, just open the packet by a corner and this makes it easier to get the powdery substance into the watering can.

Once mixed you need to water it on to the ground. One can should do about 10m²
You also need to then water in the same amount of plain water. You can use a coarse rose on the can if you have one.
Repeat for another 3 lots – until you have used the entire packet up. Make sure you have watered them in too.

You should find that within one week your seedlings and plants are protected. It should last for 6 weeks.

The bigger pack covers 100m²
It’s safe for animals and plants – and won’t hurt humans either! It’s the perfect answer to slug problems!

This definietly deserves a mention! I’ve been making enquiries recently with local authorities about what happens to the material that the public send away for composting. In Cambrideshire they have an amazing scheme!

Donarbon makes the soil improver they produce through our in-vessel composting system available for the public to collect free of charge at their 3 main sites in Cambridgeshire. These sites are:

Near the main entrance to the Waterbeach Waste Management Park
At the Alconbury Waste Transfer Station
At the March Waste Transfer Station

You will need to take your own spade or shovel and sacks or a small trailer. The free soil improver is available at the following times:

At Waterbeach from 8 am to 4 pm Monday to Friday and 8 am to 1 pm Saturday.
At the Alconbury and March Waste Transfer Stations from 8 am to 4pm Monday to Friday.
For more information about the free compost visit the Donarbon Site

I’m really impressed by this scheme! It’s a great way for people to get free soil conditioning compost!

Perth and Kinross Council also offer free compost!

Please get in touch if your local council does something similar!

Slugs are a major pest to the vegetable garden. It seems like they’ll travel for miles to get to your deliciously young plants that you’ve just put in. It can be devasting to see plants scoffed overnight.

There’s a few things you can do to get rid of slugs in the garden.

You can use beer traps. This involves putting beer in a container and the slugs are attracted to the smell of the beer and get in for a drink. Once in they drown. A bit gross and not for the squeamish – you have to keep it clear of dead ones else they become a raft for the living… Told you it was gross… It’s effective and you can use very cheap beer. It’s also a good excuse for keeping a few tins in the shed incase of emergencies.

You can use slug pellets. These are a bit pricey and need regularly reapplying as they disolve in the rain and damp.

Another very gross one – You can go and kill them at night – either by chopping them up or applying salt. You can also mow the lawns in the late evenings – as slugs are active in the night-time then you can kill quite a few at night by just cutting the grass. The neighbours will think you’re mad and you might end up having an accident so we don’t recommend this one.

The most sensible way is to buy Nemaslug Nematodes: Slug Killer. It’s available in two sizes:
Regular Pack treats up to 40m²
Large pack treats up to 100 metres square

This simply needs watering in to your garden. Easy. Simple and the nemotodes do the hard work for you! It’ll last 6 weeks too!

Got to be worth getting just so you can see how much your garden can produce when you’re not feeding a hoard of slugs!

Figo connectors at Unwins
What are they? They’re really useful connectors for making all sorts of useful things for your garden – fruit frames to protect your fruit from the birds, to pea netting, bean wigwags and anything else you can think of.

Everyone has canes or poles, but fixing them together is always a real bind! Figo makes it easy though. They will fit a massive range of cane sizes too – 8mm to 16mm which means you don’t have to hunt round for different canes – just use the ones you’ve got.

You get ten figo connectors in a pack
* SIX 3-way connectors per box. (for corners)
* FOUR 4-way connectors per box

This has got to be a must for anyone who’s spent the summer watching the cherries on their tree ripen to only find that the birds have scoffed the lot before you’ve picked them! Use figo to make a cage for your cherry tree!
Or use it to put fleece around plants to protect them from the frost or wind. These will be handy for all those protection jobs in the garden! They’re flexible enough to do the angles you need – so if you want to make a funny shape frame these are ideal.

The new Pump N’ Go sprayer from Roundup looks like a great way to spray a larger area with weedkiller.
Its got an adjustable nozzle so you can change the setting from jet to spray.
Normally, you should always use weedkiller on a calm day – if it’s at all windy you risk spraying all of your garden – however this jet spray is more intense and less likely to blow about. On a fine calm day you can use the wider spray setting.
Roundup’s Pump N’ Go Sprayer will treat an area of up to 150m2
This easy to use container does have a child resistant trigger though! That means it’s safe from being accidentally used by your kids! This pump and go action gives you up to 3 minutes’ continuous spraying – after about 20 pumps. You can then aim really well at the weeds you need spraying.
Another advantage of this product is that it ensure you only have weedkiller in a container clearly marked as weedkiller. There’ve been some terrible accidents where people have sprayed their garden using a sprayer only to find someone has used weedkiller in it!

This would be great for using along paths at home or the allotment. It’s easy to carry and use. Roundup works by getting to the root of the weed and kills it from there! Initially you may think it’s not very effective as the weed may appear only slightly damaged – however the magic of roundup is going on – you just can’t see it. It’s effective for plants with roots that break up when you try and dig them out – poison the root and the plant dies!
You can buy this Pump Acion RoundUp at Wilkinson Plus online as well as other online retailers.

Mantis UK is a well known name in the garden!
Mantis Garden Tiller
Free Postage. 1 year
in-home trial Includes
Border Edger, Kickstand.www.mantis-uk.co.uk

This is one of those garden must haves for anyone with a decent size garden. If you want to turn over the soil then one of these is just what you need. It’ll make your life so much easier and you’ll wonder why you ever spent all those hours digging over the soil when one of these does the entire garden in less than an hour!

FREE Border Edger Attachment and Kickstand when you purchase the Mantis 4-Stroke Honda-Powered Tiller/Cultivator. Plus FREE Owners Video.
One year in-home trial; money back guarantee plus -The Mantis Tiller is backed by a FIVE-YEAR warranty, plus a lifetime warranty on the tines against breakage
Perfect for raised beds, and gardens of all sizes.
Digs down 10 inches.
Easy to start, easy to operate. Weighs only 24 pounds (11 kg) making is easy to carry about
No fuel mixing required!!
So small and compact you can use it anywhere.
Cuts through hard sod, compact soil or tangly weeds.
Fun to use! This is a real boys toy for the garden!
Weed a 30′ x 40′ garden in just 20 minutes!
Fold-down handles for convenient storage.
Great optional attachments and accessories available.
Fold-down handles for convenient storage.
So versatile, you’ll use it throughout the entire gardening season. You can use it between rows as the digging width is only 22cm – idea if you want to squeeze another row of something in the veg plot. Just dig it over and it’s ready for a quick rake and plants.
The edger looks perfect if you like neat edges around your lawn too. No more half moon edging and all that effort!

one of these tools makes gardening so much less effort – if you’ve just started on a new garden, or have been given an overgrown allotment plot one of these will make the whole thing effort free. You could spend hours and hours digging over the soil but one of these soil tilllers from Mantis is so much easier to do.
You will be the envy of your neighbours too!

Now this is a really useful looking bit of kit – the Windowsill Plant Propagator

Windowsill Propagator

from £12.95

It allows you to sow 49 plants in one easy to use container.
It’s guaranteed for 12 years
The propogator is completely reusable and dish washer-safe for sterilisation
Ideal for both greenhouses and windowsills – it’s a pretty neat looking item too!
The lid can be turned 90′ which allows air vents to be open or shut.
Easy to get plants out of.
Use for veg or flowers.

This is a must have for gardeners who are fed up with the slugs winning all the time!
It’s a safe and easy way to ensure that you get the best from your garden and that the slugs are got rid of without you having to use nasty slug pellets.

Nemaslug

To treat up to 40 m2 is £9.95
Treat up to 100 metres square you need the bigger pack which is £19.95

You can use this on your harden at home or your allotment plot. Work out which pack size you need. If you only have a tiny garden then offer the rest of the nemotodes mix to a neighbour (Offer to put it on too – that way you get rid of the neighbouring slugs too!)

The advantages of using a nemotode slug killer
* Easy to use – just mix with water and water on! Avoiding leaves – (wash them off) – use on damp soil (Shouldn’t be difficult for that!) Probably in the evening is best as they won’t dry up before they get underground. Don’t use too early in the year – read the instructions on the right time to use in your area.

* Extremely Effective. You get 300,000 nematodes for every square metre of soil, giving at least six weeks control of slugs.

* Harmless to children, pets, birds and wildlife.
Which is always good to hear!

* Perfectly safe to use on food crops. Probably essential too if you want a crop! The battle between gardener and slug just got easier!

* Apply once every 6 weeks

* Not washed away by rain (unlike water soluble pellets)

Nemaslug Nematodes: Slug Killer
All vegetable gardeners know that the slug is one of the worst enemies in the garden. You can try all the beer traps you like, the gravel, and the copper tape but the slugs will still get to the plants and munch away at your newly planted seedlings.

What you need is something really effective like nematodes. Nematodes are microscopic organisms that kill slugs above and below ground. They are completely harmless to all garden wildlife as well as pets and children. They make your garden safe to as she won’t need to use slug pellets, so this is less chance of you poisoning your soil.

It’s perfectly safe to use on crops you’re going to wait. You should apply it just once every six weeks as this is how long the protection masts. It isn’t washed away by rain, but it does need the sort to be warm enough. You can order it now and they will send it out when the weather is warm and warm enough.
This pack can treat up to 40 m². There are also other packs designed to treat for other pests such as onion fly, caterpillars, directs, moths, carrot root fly, cabbage root fly and many other things. If you grow vegetables, then you know just how destructive these pests complete your crop. By investing just a small amount of money in the Nemesys products you have a simple pest control solution.

Things you should know about growing onions. Onions are mostly grown from onion sets. That is onions that have started to grow still kind little bulbs. They can be heat-treated which discourages them from bolting. You can grow onions from seed, and some varieties have only grown from seed, that a spring onions usually. Lots of different types of onions but there are a few names that come up time and time again as being good growers.

Onions will grow in most areas in your garden, they’re happy in most soils especially if you’re adding in the first flights to keep them happy. They prefer good drainage, and the rich soft soil.

When you plant them, you plant the sets so they are just below the surface of the soil and only a tiny bit the onion bulb shows. This bit is very inviting to birds, who want to investigate and pull out the onion sets. It’s best to check that they were all covered up still on a vacant basis until they have started growing among the birds can’t pull them out. You can of course use netting to keep the birds away from them, or even use a cloche. Don’t plant them when it’s really wet, but plant them as early as possible so they get a good long growing season. You could also start them off in some potting soil in doors, this encourages them to have a good root system.

Spacing is something you need to watch carefully. You really do want to be able to home or out the onions using a hoe rather than having to hand weed. If you plant the onions too close together, then they are also competing more for water and nutrients and may not grow as big as they should. You might find it useful to use and marker when you are planting them to ensure that they are equally spaced.

They will need regular weeding throughout the growing season, as well as regular feeding. Because of the upright nature of the leaves, this means that they don’t suppress any weeds on the ground around them like other plants mark.
Onions are ready when they leave starts yellowing dieback, let this happen naturally rather than bending the leads over to speed it up. When you harvest them, if it’s dry warm and sunny, then you can just put a fork under them to lift the roots and break these, and leave the onions out in the sunshine a day or two. Those onions with a thick neck needs using first as they do not store as well. Allow the onions to dry for a couple of weeks in a well separated area, a wire tray or an area spread with newspaper will be good for this. As they dry you can push dirt and excess skin off them, do not remove the golden skin as this will protect the onion. You can learn to string them together so you can hang them up somewhere, or you can store them in an onion now. You need to make sure they are completely dry before storing, any damp leaves on the plants will cause them to rot. The onions will last 3 to 6 months, but in good conditions they may last longer.

If you’re onions rot in the ground, then this could be onion neck rot. Onions can also be affected by fungal growths, onion flies and onion thrips.

By buying from reputable sellers and not growing onions in the same spot from more than two years at a time, you should avoid some of these pests.