A perfect weekend - ruined!

I normally like my Bank Holiday weekends. So long as I take the Long Suffering for an hour or so drive to the coast and treat her to some jellied eels, my weekend is my own.

I usually try and use the weekend as my last real big effort in the garden before the summer's gone - to all intents and purposes, summer has had it now and we've another winter to prepare for.

But there's still pleasure to get out of the garden and I was looking forward to a few hours pottering - when I noticed something wasn't quite right.

My lettuces had gone.

Not just the odd leaf on the odd plant - but every single one of the damn things gone.

Eaten by slugs!

Apparently we've been hit with a record number of slugs this year because of all the wet weather we've been having. Well they must have been waiting for me to turn my back - I've had no trouble with them at all until the weekend.

Some bright spark with nothing better to do has counted the slugs this year - and there are 15 billion of the blighters in our gardens this year. But it ain't just the slugs you see that are the problem - they eat twice their body weight every day and lay up to 100 eggs each.

I'm not a fan of slug pellets and I'm no believer in the beer trap either - I can't stand the things, so there's no way I'm going to waste beer on the flippin' things. I favour a couple of tricks to prevent slugs getting at my crops - and I've a couple of real mean killer tricks too! My old dad used to swear that if you surrounded the base of your plants with soot that'll stop them getting at the plant - but with soot a little more difficult to come by I've taken to planting strong smelling plants such as mint and garlic around the place - that spooks them too. Unfortunately I didn't practice what I preach this year and I've paid the consequences.

Mind you, I've got my own back on some of them. My expensive plants have a small ring of copper around the pots or the plant itself - that gives them a nice electric shock; I also sprinkle liberal qualities of All Bran around the place. The slugs love it but it kills them by expanding when they've eaten it!

I'll teach 'em to eat my salad!