Come into the garden with Maud - all obsessive and wannabe gardeners welcome

[ComeIntoTheGardenMaud]

Whether you've got rolling acres or a tiny courtyard, whether you're a novice or a gardening die-hard, whether you're aiming for a garden of Sissinghurst loveliness or self-sufficiency à la Felicity Kendal in The Good Life, this is the place to be. Take a seat on the tastefully-painted Lutyens bench and chat with fellow enthusiasts. There may even be a bottle of gin in the potting shed.

I have now but my water butt also became a casualty to the fencing workmen's over enthusiastic whacking and shoving... Not a disaster - it fell off its perch in an uncontrolled manner but most of its water remained inside. Part of the base is a bit cracked and I wonder if I should reuse it at all - its a 210 or 250 litre butt, so when full it will weigh lots. I have bricks I could put it on...

The new fence is far superior to the old, and is nearly finished. DH and I did the new shed's roof this afternoon so kept an eye on progress. They are also going to take away a couple of old panels cluttering up our clutter-area which is a useful favour.

I don't really think anything is destroyed, it's a good time of year for plants to bounce back from a bit of rough treatment. I'm slowly descending from my state of high dudgeon!

Seedlings, after all that, have made ok/unremarkable progress in my absence. Beans and peas need more string around the canes. All the potato sprouts are up, yay! And the alliums are looking really strong, and the astilbe are up. Ahhhh.

I have similar fears, Lexi, about what might happen to my climbers. Neighbour has mentioned that he intends to replace a fence panel and I said that would be fine and, if he told me when he was going to do it, I wd detach the netting that supports my climbers - including a fabulous clematis Montana - but now I'm plagued by the thought that he might have meant that he was going to do it now.

Lexi, I'm sure they'll bounce back - I've been trampling on things all week and 48 hours later they look OK

I do feel your pain - I once returned home from work to find DH had strimmed down my sunflowers and on another occasion he strimmed my sweetpeas.

I'm about to wage war on slugs - I assume it is slugs that have chomped some of my pea seedlings in half. I've just set a beer trap and I shall be out with my torch and rubber gloves after dark - oh the glamour!

I'm thinking of getting a head torch for night-time slug hunting!

::another glamour-puss::

I have to start the nightly slug hunt too - not because there's much to damage in the garden (apart from strawberries) but because the trails all over the patio and chairs give me the creeps.

Last year I bagged them up and put them in the bin but I felt bad

But I can't put down slug pellets - I don't care if they say kind to animals - I don't believe it and I can't risk the chickens pecking at them.

I do sometimes use the organic slug pellets but I prefer the stuff that you water on. The slug hunt is another line of defence, in the vain hope that my hostas will get to the end of the season.

I bought some very snazzy slug beer traps. Haven't used them yet but I'm hopeful. Also need to order some nematodes as I'm not sure my mother's been very successful in 'brewing' her own.

It's a bit quiet over on the chicken topic - those of you who have chickens do you have any advice on chicken houses & breeds? May be going to visit a chicken supplier tomorrow so need some ideas.

I don't use slug pellets as we have two dogs and five cats.

I use beer traps and I go out slug-plucking. Although I am so feeble I can't bring myself to harm them so I put them in a bucket then walk down the road and tip them out - I have been known to do this in my nighty and wellies in the dark.

I don't know about slugs but I have it from an impeccable source the late and much-missed John Peel's show that snails have a homing instinct and will travel a long way to get home.

I have two bits of fencing which need replacing but cant find anyone to deliver the fencing without spending vast sums.
How is it that you all have slug trails? I dont seem to have slug trails. But then there are lots of lovely birds- a pair of robins, a pair of blue tits, a pair of black birds, and I am hoping last year's woodpecker will come back. Perhaps they eat all the slugs.

I put them on the far side of a stream in the hope that they can't swim (that's why I wear the wellies to get across)

You can tell have given it a lot of thought

blackpuddingbertha - I've got an original eglu from omlet.co.uk - had it 9 years now. I have 3 chooks, the bog standard chickens, Rhode Island ones. The ones I had previously were south american chickens and laid Tiffany blue eggs but they were quite small and they stopped laying over the winter.

I've had these chickens a year and have had an egg every single day from each - astonishingly consistent layers.

I do sympathise - the reason I haven't used slug traps for tears is because the resulting soup is too off putting.

I try very hard to attract birds into the harden but we have so many bloody cats nearby that we don't get many. I did though have a beautiful moment on Friday when the robin hovered, humming bird style, over the bed I was digging.

Years
Garden, obviously

The slug soup is vile I make DH deal with it

My cats are so overfed and lazy that the birds are pretty safe. We have lots of them feeding at the birdtable and there were seagulls eyeing up my dug beds earlier.

Thank you Laurie. DH doesn't like the look of the eglus even though I explained all the pros about cleaning etc. - I'm not going to upset him now he seems won over so a wooden house it will have to be.

These are my slug traps.

What is the effect of chickens on lawns and flower beds and patios and so forth assuming they have a free range? Also does one chase them back into the eglu at night? Also how fox proof is an eglu? There are loads of foxes round here - well, at least one.

Blackpuddingbertha - are they effective?

Mine are just homemade affairs - old pieces of tupperware recycled.

I've just been out and done a search and I can't find one slug - I shall leave it a while and go back out again, I will not be defeated!

Those do look slightly less disgusting, but there are still the cadavers to dispose of. I may have to become a Buddhist.

If you have a decent size garden then you can move the eglu around - you need to move it every week and not revisit the same spot for about 6 weeks or your lawn will be dead (we have a very small garden and the chickens ate the lawn in a week ) - we now have patio and deck.

They don't free range unless I am actually sitting in the garden as they will eat everything green. They do go back into the eglu in the dark but I keep mine in the run about 98% of the time - sometimes I take them up to the allotment and have them peck on a fenced in bit for fun.

I saw a fox about 4 months ago and since then I have locked them in the eglu at night and have got up at dawn (which is now 6.30 and will be 5am in a month or so) since then just in case it's not fox proof.

I like the look of this
www.firstfurniture.co.uk/products/Small-Chicken-Coop-%28NEW%29.html

though this looks slightly more fox proof
www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/images/B0049TC9Y8/ref=dp_image_z_0?ie=UTF8&n=11052671&s=outdoors

and the design of this is amusing
<a class="break-all" href="http://www.google.co.uk/imgres?imgurl=www.housemagz.com/wp-content/uploads/modern-chicken-coop-unique-design-for-pet.jpg&imgrefurl=www.housemagz.com/the-nogg-modern-wooden-chicken-coop-building-plans" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">www.google.co.uk/imgres?imgurl=www.housemagz.com/wp-content/uploads/modern-chicken-coop-unique-design-for-pet.jpg&imgrefurl=www.housemagz.com/the-nogg-modern-wooden-chicken-coop-building-plans

these remind me of mp's expenses
www.hollandhenhouses.com/ourhenhouses.html

this is a better site for the nogg
www.contemporist.com/2010/09/27/the-nogg-a-modern-chicken-coop/

I promise to stop posting about coops now unless i find a really wacky one.

Snails are clever. We did experiments a couple of years ago and they homed and worked as a team to overcome obstacles