So gutted about garden...

[BolloxtoGender]

Just noticed this morning that some caterpillar 🐛 has chomped through most of the shoots on my clematis.

And slugs 🐌 and snails have eaten their way their much of my sedums.

I m feeling really annoyed and just want to vent because I was so looking for to spring and seeing the plants grow.

Please tell me they will bounce back.

Also any tips on what to do please?

Through much of my sedums

So looking forward to spring...

Stuff really wants to grow at this time of year - and in response to being munched, they can put extra effort in, which is why pruning is so effective.

Rather than the usual sacrificial waste of perfectly good beer, I make up traps of a tin sunk in the ground and filled with warm water, a tiny pinch of sugar and dried yeast. That tricks them into thinking it's beer and they drown themselves with an extra air of disappointment.

I've also cut the tops and bottoms off drinks bottles and put them over for long enough for them to get a bit tougher.

But most of the time, I just go with it, as I would rather have a thriving ecosystem than introduce poisons into the garden and, by extension, into the wildlife that eat the other beasties.

Two years ago DH strimmered right through the stems of my favourite clematis. I cried. It grew back last year, didn't get many flowers but it is looking very healthy now.

Encourage birds in to eat the pests.

The warm weather early on has given the pests a head start. Your Clematis will grow again, your sedums should survive, and the predators will arrive shortly to eat the slugs. How's that?

You could water in some nematodes? I found they really did work last spring : my poor delphinium were nothing but freshly gnawed stumps every morning, but after the nematodes, they got enough respite to shoot up.

Thank you. My nematodes arrived from Amazon prime just yesterday.

Think I might give that a try.

Meanwhile been hand picking off the snails 🐌 by hand and murdering them as I was clearing the beds today.....

Local deer rampaged through my front garden and all my beautiful apricot wallflowers are 1cm tall stumps. Makes me want to bloody cry. Bashed over most of my hyacinths too and shat everywhere. Give me slugs any day.

Oh is it that time of year again? I'll be out with a torch and some awful torture devices.

Nematodes were very effective last year btw.

I found millions of greenfly on my beautiful hellebores today
Bastards

I need a deck chair, a straw hat and a 12 bore. But then I see them skipping through the trees and think aww sweet.
I'm just going to plant euphorbia out the front now. Nothing eats them!

I moved an old rotten bird feeder to find masses of slugs under at the weekend. Called the chickens over who had a feast. Usually though I collect all snails and slugs and pop them on the drain cover, which I view as a giant plate for them :)

This is always annoying, I bought a three foot yellow jasmine and planted it last week only for the deer to eat it yesterday, to say I was pissed off is an understatement.

The woodpigeons have started on the leaves of my Chinese plum, again.

And why are they called woodpigeons?they're bloody shit at sitting in trees.

Mitzik is so right. I've had an organic garden for 14 years and there are far fewer snails or slugs than there were when we first moved here. It's strange I've never deliberately gone out to kill them, I've just encouraged the birds and hedgehogs, it seems to do the trick!

There are deer in the forest over the way and they've never come in !!! (she says, hopefully not tempting fate )

I've got honey fungus (well not me personally) I am now eyeing every shrub with suspicion. Bloody stuff has spread everywhere. Nice day, though 😊

Yes. Blessed Day.

On a brighter note, my white themed bulb lasagne that I potted in a tall terracotta pot is performing well. And my Annabelle hydrangeas are springing into life.

Also massive mission creep.....I started off needing a new shed, and a shed base....now I’m looking at laying a stone patio for the base and a sitting area.....plus sleepers for a wall....

Being a newbie gardener, what do I do with the bulb lasagna pot after flowering is finished, BTW? If I leave them they will come back next year won’t they? Or do I need to replant or replace them? Help.....

Well I found out last night thanks to mumsnet I've got three horse chestnut trees that have self seeded and are now growing in a very inappropriate place all clumped together sigh, so they need to come out.

Why do the things you want never self seed,,,,🤣

Bollox The easiest thing to do is to just to cut out the flower heads and then leave the leaves to rot down. ( or you can take the bulbs including the leaves out and leave them in dry dark place to use next year , without their dead leaves of course!)

It's a shame when you have to remove tiny trees Bluntness My ash tree is always self seeding.

I'm trying to grow foxgloves and primroses from seed but with no luck.

I've always found foxgloves really hard to grow from seed, I've tried a couple of times. Then one spring out of nowhere, a couple of years after I'd put the seeds down, I have foxgloves!

Don't kill off the slugs and snails, just encourage the wildlife that will eat them. Song and mistle thrushes are in decline due to lack of slugs and snails, though frankly I don't think they are putting in the effort and actually looking under my plants, esp the strawberries ;)

As for self seeding trees, put them in pots. They grow much slower and you get free trees! We've got 6 self seeded silver birches and two cherries, which will be planted out here, and a conker tree which will stay in its pot until we have a garden large enough for one.

Foxgloves are biennial, so it takes two years to get big plants and flowers, possibly you missed the seedling stage ?