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Are garden beasties eating your freshly grown veg before you can?

Here are our top tips to help you identify pests and protect plants with environmentally friendly and economical ammunition.

If you spend your time sowing, watering and looking after plants we think it’s only fair that you get to eat some of the garden too.

Creepy crawlies are important to keeping your garden healthy so before you point a finger of blame at every creepy crawly in your garden check out our guide.

Some creatures are very popular with gardeners, like worms and bees, while slugs and caterpillars are the least popular. But, without caterpillars there would be no beautiful butterflies and without slugs hedgehogs would be hungry. Here’s some tips on how to play your part in creating a balanced ecosystem and preventing the bugs from eating ALL your food. Here’s how?

Each crop has its own enemy. So Seed Agents here is your mission:

Click on the images below for tips of how best to protect your veg patch!

Protect your Plants

Confuse your Pests

Pick Off Pests

Other Ammunition

Let us know how you got on by sending in a photo of your Secret Seed Agent work in action!

Send it either by e-mail to: fun[at]secretseedsociety.com or by post to: Green House, 26a Boat Horse Lane, Crick, Northampton NN6 7TH.

Are your veg leaves looking like lace?

It’s not only humans who love fresh tasty veg, they are enjoyed by lots of other creatures.

It is very important that we create a healthy and varied eco-system in our gardens but also I think it’s only right that if we sow, water and generally look after what we are growing we should be able to enjoy eating it.

So, what should we be looking out for?

Some creatures are very helpful for example worms and bees, but some are not so like slugs, caterpillars and fleabeetles. We all love hedgey and he depends on having some juicy slugs to gulp down.  Similarly we love the butterflies that come from caterpillars so we need to be careful.  We don’t want to kill them all we just need to prevent them eating our food but how?

Each crop has its own enemy. So Seed Agents here is your mission:

Click on the images below for tips of how best to protect your veg patch!

Protect your Plants

Confuse your Pests

Pick Off Pests

Other Ammunition

Send it either by e-mail to: fun[at]secretseedsociety.com or by post to: Green House, 26a Boat Horse Lane, Crick, Northampton NN6 7TH.

As an author, I am often asked where I get my ideas from. Some people assume that artists are born a higher quantity of a finite substance called “creativity”. It follows logically that regular folks, who were not blessed with whimsy, must safeguard their limited amount or it will run out like a depleted well.

Creativity is more like a Mogwai. When it is watered, it spawns more and more Mogwai, but never feed your Mogwai after midnight because then it will become a Gremlin.

  

Wait…  Let’s try again.  Creativity is like gardening.  You create a space and prepare it.  You make sure the soil is fertilized and that the area will get enough sun.  You decide what to you’d like to grow and plant your seeds.  You water every day and weed when needed.  You ward off pests to protect your crop.  You watch like a proud parent as your fruits and vegetables grow big, strong and beautiful.  You reap your harvest and lo, and behold, you have hundreds more seeds that you could plant over again.

You don’t need a designated space to be creative, but it helps. A space where you feel safe to explore and experiment is a protected, fertile environment to plant your ideas. Then you need to water them with attention. They can’t grow without you actively giving your time and energy.

You need to protect yourself and your ideas from others who may be negative or judgmental. They may destroy your creation before it is ever fully realized. When your creation is fully formed, it will be self sufficient and resilient, with a life of its own.

             PEST                               PEST

During the whole process, you will have discovered a hundred other opportunities to start again in another way and you will be nourished by your previous success.

It’s a corny analogy (get it, corny), but it is apt enough. Creativity takes follow-through on an idea and that same follow-through leads to more ideas. Creativity takes a risk. Some ideas may “die”, but others will blossom more successfully than you could have imagined.

You may have one idea that you’ve been saving, holding on to it because you’ve thought your creativity was finite. I suggest you plant it and create a garden teeming with life.

…

My Garden in Happier Days
I used to engage in a series of ongoing skirmishes with the animal pests that inhabited my yard.
The trouble began with the rabbits. One summer it seemed like there were rabbits everywhere. I had planted some Icelandic poppies and was eagerly waiting for the buds to open (a one-a-year event). One morning I looked and all the buds had been neatly nipped off.
My husband and I started a rabbit resettlement program (ok, we were young and naïve.) We put a live trap out in the garden and would drive the captured rabbits out to the industrial park and release them. We did this several times.
And then we caught a skunk instead. We retired the live trap and got out of the rabbit relocation business.
My neighbor took a more direct approach when a rabbit ate their newly planted pansies. He went out with an air rifle and shot it. I came home to a dead rabbit in my driveway and his wife and daughter crying, “Murderer!” as he shoveled it into a garbage bag.
I used to use nets to try to keep the birds from eating all our blueberries. Finally, I yanked the bushes and planted roses instead.
I’ve come to view the wildlife that share our yard as a kind of informal, fluid zoo. I realize that I’ve planted my house and garden where animals used to live. Small wonder if they burrow under my deck and raid my bird-feeder.
We have a lively population of chipmunks and squirrels. The chipmunks and moles have a network of tunnels throughout the flowerbeds. Now I sit in the garden and watch as they chase each other around the deck.
There’s a bird feeder outside the window where I write. It’s on a flexible metal pole. I find it entertaining when this big fat squirrel sets it to bouncing and goes flying off . HAHAHA. (It doesn’t take much to distract me when I’m on deadline).


One of the chipmunks took a more direct approach. He found the bag of birdseed in the garage and nipped the corner off, scattering birdseed all over the floor of the garage. No climbing necessary.
Recently, I noticed that the rabbits had nipped all the leaves off my lilies. Hmmm, I thought. Wonder if they’ll survive. The lilies, not the rabbits.
Ducks will lay their eggs anywhere. They are all like, Who you looking at? Earlier this summer, a pair of mallards laid their eggs in the flowerbed next door. The one belonging to Deadeye the bunny killer.
So I’m more laid back as a gardener than I used to be. Or maybe I’ve given up. I’ve accepted the fact that my yard is never going to be a showplace. There are some things that are just not meant to be.