A day for love - unless you're a slug.

As the days grow longer - at last - and spring edges ever closer, our thoughts are supposed to turn to love and romance.  February 14th may be Valentine's Day, the day for love and all that, but for the dedicated gardener it marks another important event - the day that, traditionally, first steps are taken to ward off the dreaded slug.

I'm not sure if it is the Hurst Green clay and all the dampness it creates that encourages vast numbers of slugs in my own garden, but we seem to be some form of Slug Central for the little gastropods, where they seem to be having a riotous party with their close friends, the snails, with my prized plants as their canapes.  I must admit also that despite all good intentions for a wildlife friendly garden, I still cannot stop myself using slug pellets. I can hear the sharp intakes of breath from here as you read this, but we have such an issue with these slimy things that it boils down to a stark choice; the slugs, or the delphiniums.  And I, appalled reader, choose my delphies (and my hostas) every time.  You can of course try the eco-friendly alternatives such as copper tape on pots, copper rings around plants, new pellets made out of a woolly material, or sharp grit around the plants, but I must personally admit that the old fashioned slug pellets and the liquid Slugit have always worked the best for me - and besides, I do try to make up for using them in other ways.  We all have exceptions that break the rule, and I will not apologise for this one.

There is of course no special or magical reason why slug pellets - or their more friendly alternatives - should be applied specifically on Valentine's Day, but slugs and snails are generally just becoming active at this particular time of year (although they may be several weeks in advance this year owing to the warm and damp winter, assuming they haven't actually drowned in the meantime).   We need to remember to protect young delphinium and hosta shoots in good time before the slugs go to town on them, and so Valentine's Day makes a very memorable time-marker to jog your memory and put in slug protection before the little blighters appear and do the damage.

Besides, as I tell my wife, I can't be blamed if the importance of putting out the protection on Valentine's Day itself means that we can't go out and book a table at a restaurant. You can buy a lot of slug pellets for the price of a meal at Le Manoir...