Gardeners' Chat

[MmePoppySeedDefage]

Chat. For gardeners. About gardening, but we can go off piste and chat about things like non-gardening clothes, or food or whatever, without being told off

I used to bury empty cat food tins in my garden in England and fill them with beer to tackle slugs, but fishing out the bloated corpses wasn't much fun. Weirdly, I've never seen a slug here - I had loads of hostas in my previous garden and never had one slug-chewed.

There are a few trees I routinely grab hold of on my walks through the woods, to get me in or out of the river or down a slippery path, and have on occasion put my hand in its usual place/position on the trunk or branch… directly onto a slug. Perhaps they’re attracted by the smell? It has happened a few times now, and with thousands of trees and me only touching about ten of them, what are the chances of slugs being in the exact same spot as my hand?

As a person interested in language, I have to wonder if somewhere in the etymological past there is a connection between slug and ugh.

If there isn't, Brit, there ought to be. Maybe we should make one up.

Isn't the word slug used elsewhere? For the shape? Like a bullet is called a slug. I wonder which came first? Then there's booze, a slug of whisky. I don't know how that fits in, except perhaps the shape it makes as it slides down your throat.

Mind, it could fit. The 'ugh! I needed that' after necking a dram.

Slug of whisky.

This is interesting and too long to quote.

A few years ago, I spent a fair bit of time looking at the bark on trees to see how far up the snails had got and the height depended on the time of year. As I recall, in spring they're often about head height. It may be the same with slugs, but I'm not sure. The slugs seemed to prefer grooved bark to tuck into, while the snails liked smooth bark.

Ha! How interesting, Tric!

@MereDintofPandiculation thank you, that was interesting.

I vaguely remember something (probably Springwatch) about slugs climbing trees. I think it might have been a particularly species. Great grey slugs climb up things to mate, they hang on a rope of mucus, twine around each other and, as hermaphrodite, there are penises for days. It's actually quite lovely.

We had a snail climb up to and crap on our bathroom window. Obviously, couldn't get through the glass to use the facilities. Helped us out actually, by outing the robbing bastard who we'd been paying to sit in our garden and drink lager clean the glass.

We're currently staying in a holiday cottage which is on an estate around a Big House and I noticed a label on a newly-planted hedge showing that it was this special mix:

www.hopesgrovenurseries.co.uk/shop/mixed-native/gin-makers-hedge-mix-mixed-native/

The hedge around our cottage is, thinking about it, probably another hedge
mixture from that supplier - we noticed that it was recently-planted and full of different types of plants.

Happy day - Hayloft catalogue has arrived in the post! I almost never buy anything, but do like to go through it “fantasy-ordering”.

We have 2.3 long thin acres, largely bordered by “hedgerow” which is now pretty much woodland. Ash, oak, hazel, willow, beech, various thorn-types… I’d really like a fruiting hedgerow, and have always craved assorted colours of bamboo as fencing - too thick (once established) for horses to barge their way through but if you strip the lower stems of leaves to 6’ it would make a nice airy unusual rustling barrier.

The fruiting hedgerow sounds nice but sloe can be a sod for suckering.

Same with bamboo, choose your variety carefully. There's a reason bamboo covers entire hillsides in some countries. With the right variety, the idea of a hedge with the canopy lifted sounds lovely.

Yes, the black one I have is very slow-growing, so would be perfect… eventually. The green one we had before that got killed by frost/snow bending the stems over for weeks on end in 2009-10, and for YEARS afterwards we were digging up new shoots, it was like knotweed.

I'm dealing with a knotweed like bamboo in someone's garden and have been digging it/poisoning it for two years now but it's still sending up shoots. I hate the stuff, unless it's covering a hillside in Asia, that is.

You know what you need

We once found a nest in the bamboo, attached to three of the stems. Dunno what type of bird it was, it looked like a conical basket with a hole at the top to get in and out of.

Long tailed tit?

Ah, we do get those, so yes, maybe! Just so brilliantly constructed, and they were born with the knowledge!

My dog had pups and I was amazed at how she knew exactly what to do, how to nibble off their umbilical cords and wash them to make them wee and poo (then eat the poo). It was staggering and made me wonder how human females would manage without having learned anything about childbirth, would they instinctively know what to do like all other mammals?

It's why they're also called bumbarrels.
Apparently their collective noun is 'zephyr' - and they need one, you hardly ever see them alone. I absolutely love the phrase 'a zephyr of bumbarrels', and use it whenever I possibly can.
Hence this post.

A zephyr of bumbarrels - marvellous!

I was taught about nests by an elderly neighbour who had been watching birds since he was about six. He'd take me on slow walks along hedgerows and we'd peer into them looking for nests. I was thrilled when I spotted my first long tailed tit's nest all by myself and couldn't wait to show him. It was in a big patch of brambles in woodland. For scale, here's another one found a few years later.

You can get yellow varieties of clumping bamboo, as well as the black one. You could plant a stripy hedge like a giant bee

Yes! And red ones too! Where my garden joins the field is about 30’-40’ long, and those unusual bamboos cost around £20 each, I’d need a lottery win really, but it would look so good.

That nest is either much larger than I would expect for such tiny birds, or your hand is much smaller than average!