Home made remedies pointless.

Some may work.

Ive had box blight attacks the last couple of years including this year. Ive created a spray that seems to stop it in its tracks. Not a permanant cure but seems to stop the attack allowing regrowth until it comes back the following year.

 

This guy sorts the slug problem out..

 

Love the little fella

 

Two house bricks ! How big are your bloomin' Kentish slugs

 

I did the usual trick of using a home made spray of water,washing up liquid(Fairy) and garlic cloves all of which Mr Kandy mixed together for me and I continually sprayed it on to my winter broad beans but it failed and there was just too many of them so we didn’t get much of a crop this year.I even resorted to putting every ladybird I could find onto the plants but there are so many blackfly a ladybird and their babies can eat at any one sitting

I even had to resort to transferring ladybirds over to our runner bean plants when they started getting attacked as the garlic mixture hadn’t worked for them either.Even heavy rain didn’t wash them off this year like it normally does.Eventually the blackfly completed their life cycle and dissapeared but last week after getting home from our holiday I was doing some weeding on the lottie and spotted some black fly clustered round the top of some fat hen I quickly pulled up the plant threw it on the ground and stamped on it.Boy did I find that exhilarating

 

No aphids that I was aware of here (the exception was on my blackcurrants early in the season but nipping off the affected/top shoots effectively put a stop to that). no sprays for them, lots of bees around, lots of birds ......lots of different flowers basically organically grown.

I dont think copper tape has any effect on aphids

Have to say jumping on a fat hen is rather cruel Kandy

 

Hubble Bubble toil and Trouble.
Its that time of year folks.

 

The answer is to make an electric fence

 

A few years old this thread ,
but incase any one is reading for advice on aphid problem s etc

I did the same mixture as Kandy but boiled this up in an old pan. .
when cold it was strained ,bottled with the additional squirt of washing up liquid and baby oil .this year plain old cooking oil !
( grandkids had out grown the nappy stage.)
To use :: judged the measure and , diluted this with water before spraying.

might have been a fluke but This worked on Lily beatles. ........Maybe the oil ,made it difficult to get a grip.

 

I didn't recognise this topic at first. Then discovered, I had started it. I thank Shiney for pointing out in his comment,that I was only passing on a Media Announcement.
Sadly, as so often happens. Some readers mistook this as being MY teaching etc. It wasn't.

An interesting fact is, relating to the use of copper in any form as an agent to deter slugs and snails. These two creatures are Gastropods. They secrete a slime that has several functions, one being communication. The chemical in the slime has a counter reaction with the chemical in copper. This causes a natural, go no further.

Much can be found on this subject on the internet.

 

Copper tape is one of our best selling lines, and we have repeat customers, so much so, we are thinking about selling it online. Copper tape etc is too expensive for nursery use, so we use Nematodes in the warmer months, and an additive to the compost in cooler months.had some good results with epsom salt in colder months on planted Hosta's, on top of the compost.

 

Mike I'd read your post and had realised you were passing on what you had read.
So I added my own but of what I had found worked for me.same as the egg shells around hostas.these are good until it rains .....They get soft , maybe I don't boil me eggs long enough !
I find tough that growing hosted underneath my holly tree works better .I've found the slugs object to bring spiked for some reason ..

 

I personally go out every evening, look for the slugs and snails, collect them in a bucket and feed them to my chickens next morning. I don't manage to get every single slug and snail, there's the odd one or two that escape me, but I definitely have the numbers reduced.
And at least Penny and Zoe turn them into two lovely eggs for my breakfast every morning.