Fans of the Centre for Alternative Technology will be pleased to know that The Guardian is featuring a CAT garden in their Anatomy of a Garden section tomorrow - saturday 26th July. Look out for it in the magazine.

If climate change doesn’t get you, the disappearance of the honeybee will – this is the rather gloomy message of Alison Benjamin and Brian McCallum’s well researched and engagingly written new book on Colony Collapse Disorder – a honeybee ‘plague’ which has already killed millions of bees worldwide. Some 90 commercial crops owe their continued [...]

This is the follow up Garden News article about slugs and mice - printed a couple of weeks ago. Garden News is published every Tuesday and my articles appear once a fortnight. The next one will be tomorrow 22nd July.
Sometimes it’s difficult to see the wood for the trees. Last week I discovered a small [...]

It.s 10.30 sunday evening and I’ve just come back from seeing the most amazing film: The Age of Stupid. We had a special screening in Machynlleth - the film was only completed a month ago and wont be available on general release until September - but when it is you should all go and see [...]

In situations where you can’t get to your land to do a nightly slug pick and you’re only option is some sort of control is it better to use pellets or nematodes? If anyone has done this experiment let us know. Up until a couple of years ago the choice was between chemical slug pellets [...]

For that 007 moment…

If you happen to have a fast flowing river, a spare bike wheel and an enormously long piece of electric cable. I think I’d rather enjoy the stars but it does show how hydro power works at its most basic level and its fun.

Personally I think watching or listening to something would be easier than using a computer. Slug watch could take on a whole new dimension!

Take a look at this great video. I love it!

The slugs and I have finally reached a plateau of contrition. We haven’t had a rain free day for a long time now and those early salad days wishing for rain to wet test my experiment have long since gone. Luckily the actual salad still remains, and I pick a big fresh bowl of organic [...]

I’m beginning to think that this should be called snail watch, because the snails I’m picking off at the moment out number the slugs by about ten to one. Do toads eat snails? It’s one of those questions I need to look up. It must be harder to get the shell off if they do. [...]

At this time of year, when the plants are reaching puberty and you can hardly see the ground for foliage the slugs are definitely more active. I’ve only got a small patch and I check every night for about ten minutes or so, picking off what I find. Sometimes I find that it is the [...]

This is an article I wrote about a month ago so forgive the slight time vortex you are about to enter.
‘Mr Sandman bring me a dream, keep the slugs away from my little greens.’ This is my evening song as I trek down from the kitchen garden at the end of a hard days fretting. [...]

Today’s been a strange and mysterious day for slug watch. One of my pea plants had capitulated to some form of attacker but I really don’t know if it was a slug or not. I found the top half limp and separate from the bottom half, one lonely mange tout waiting to be picked amidst [...]

Its been wet the last two days, the comfrey I cut before I went to Glastonbury has turned into a brown mush and the slugs and snails seem much more numerous and adventurous now the plot is lush green with few gaps in between. I’ve got careless and neglected the comfrey cut. Perhaps they prefer [...]