Katy Ladbrook reveals it takes more
than luck to cultivate a dream garden

 

Do you ever feel like the whole world is conspiring against you and your dream of a
perfect garden?

I only have simple ambitions myself; to grow a sack of potatoes, enough peas and beans for a few meals, maybe a row or two of lettuce and when my toil is done, to have some flowers to look out on as I sit in the summer sunshine. And what do I get? Well with the weather alternately drenching or drying out the soil, the seedlings that don’t rot or wash away are snuffed out in the parched clay, which is then impossible to get a spade through. The poor plants that I do manage to coax through to adulthood are mercilessly pecked, gnawed and slimed by the other residents of the garden.

I mournfully compare my stricken tomatoes, leaning on their sticks, to the strapping great specimens on the front of the packet, and I feel the failure wash over me. Do I deserve this? I tune in to Gardeners’ Question Time religiously, I rotate crops and fertilise, I choose heritage seed and must have at least a yard of book case dedicated to horticulture. Where am I going wrong?

To really cap things off, I seem to have unparalleled skills in growing weeds. Oh yes, I can cultivate  intimidating crops of convolvulus, dandylion, chickweed, horsetail, speedwell, mouse ear and this year I have excelled myself with the exotic and enduring Japanese knotweed.

Even the flowers rebel. My attempt at companion planting resulted in one bed giving forth a bank of Californian poppies in such abundance that it blocked out enough light to kill the pumpkin vines. But it is very pretty, and at least covers up how embarrassingly small the Atlantic Giants are. I’m also feeling a bit better about the horsetail now that I’ve learnt it’s actually edible, so I’m going to pass it off as deliberate crop. There, I feel a bit better already.

Know your enemy

 

Birds

Our feathered friends like to peck out the flowering heads of broccoli and cauliflower; they’re quite fond of cabbages too. They’ll eat every  raspberry on the cane and can spy a ripe strawberry quicker than the neighbours’ kids.Remedy: Birds are startled by dazzling and glinting materials, so a scarecrow made from foil or a string of CDs should be off-putting. They don’t like rustling or movement, so a child’s windmill or even just a flapping plastic bag might do the trick. Personally I’ve never been able to build anything scary enough to see off a sparrow. I prefer setting up nets around the plants, but make sure there’s a good gap between the net and the plant because the greedy critters will reach in.BugsIf your soil and your plants are healthy they should be able to withstand attacks from bugs. Apart from blackfly, greenfly and whitefly, I haven’t had much trouble from insects so far. Maybe this was due to a resurgence in ladybirds this year.

Remedy: Prevention is better than cure, so rotate your crops and  companion plant to minimise problems. If you are very organised then introducing predator insects to eat the pests is a great solution. But now and again you’ll probably need to use some sort of insecticide, so make sure you choose products approved for organic gardening and isolate treatment as much as possible.

 

Slugs

Oh don’t get me started. I’ve tried everything. I’ve put down beer traps, sharp sand, eggshells and bran. I’ve introduced nematodes, frogs, slow worms and lizards. I’ve bribed children to collect them by the bucket, I’ve been out there in the rain rounding them up, I’ve even tried public execution as an example to the rest, but they are just relentless. Where the hell do they all come from? Why don’t they just eat the weeds? Why me?

Remedy: If you’d been through what I’ve been through and faithfully tried all the more friendly alternatives to no avail, you’d be forgiven for resorting to slug pellets! As long as you choose something that is wildlife-friendly and breaks down safely, then you can have a clean conscience.

 

Mice

I mistook it for pigeon damage at first. I thought; how did he work out how to get under the net? But the meticulous and light-footed nature of this particular thief revealed it to be a field mouse. Rows of tidy little holes dug to retrieve every single bean you planted last week. You’ve got to admire their style.

Remedy: If it wasn’t so cute with its fluffy little face and peanut-sized babies I would use poison or traps. I might be grumpy, but I can’t kill a mouse. Luckily I’ve found that they’re just not interested in the beans once they’ve grow a bit, so I start them off inside and plant them out when they’re 3-4 centimetres tall.