AUTUMN GARDENING
By CLODAGH and DICK HANDSCOMBE active gardeners and gardening authors living in Spain for 25 years.
Each of our books include a month by month gardening calendar indicating the major tasks that need attention so this month we focus on two questions often sent into our website and asked at talks wherever we have been in Spain. ‘Is there a ecological snail bait?’ and ‘Where can we buy good fish from for our garden pond?
1.DON’T PUT UP WITH THE SIGHT OF DEAD SNAILS
After the recent rain snails and slugs have woken from their summer survival slumbers to escape the hot dry weather. They are now round and about looking for succulent plants to eat in your terrace pots, the flower and vegetable gardens, and greenhouses and cold frames. They are also looking for well stocked sheltered homes for the autumn and winter from which to plan their seasonal menus. Groups of pots and under trailing plants are popular haunts. You may not have seen them for they are mainly about early in the morning and late evening as early and late golfers may know.
So now is the time to start to take action and continue to do so through the damper cooler months ahead.
Typical actions include using collecting them to eat but this is not to everyone’s taste and slug bait pellets that kill snails and slugs on contact and the vegetable plot flower beds and green house shelves can become covered with dead snails and unsightly slimy trails from dying snails . Not a pretty sight! Beer traps made by sinking plastic beakers into the ground and filling them with beer and circles of comfrey leaves can also work but have the same problem of dead snails that need to be collected up.
But now there is an eco friendly for killing snails and slugs - called Ferramol Antilimicos manufactured by a 150 year old German company Neudorff and distributed/marketed by Seipasa in Spain. We met with Product Manager recently on your behalf and discovered the following facts.
BENEFITS OF NEUDORFF FERROMOL SLUG AND SNAIL KILLER
1. Eliminates slugs and snails quickly – which it has done when we tried it out.
2. Snails and slugs disappear to die so there is no unsightly mess.
3. Safe for domestic use.
4. Not harmful to pets and wildlife including birds and worms.
5. Only need to scatter 5 grams per square metre of soil and not place in small heaps.
6. Reasonably resistant to rain.
7. When finally decays mild fertilizer effect due to iron content.
8. Can use in flower vegetable and fruit gardens.
9. Naturally occurring ingredients - no manufactured chemicals.
10. Satisfies EU ecological requirements.
Seems a great product to us and it would be wise to put a few grains on the surface of the soil in flower pots, around the edge of terraces, amongst shrubs scatter grains very importantly amongst recently planted and sown vegetables and under citrus trees that seem to attract snails.
To date distributors in Murcia are few however you can telephone Juan Luis at Neudourff Seipasa on 646-725-434 to order by mail order. He speaks good English. Why not order a supply for your community gardening club members? Interestingly what does the golf course manager use?
2. A GOOD SOURCE OF POND FISH AND WEEDS
Autumn is a good time to start to construct a garden pond or revamp an existing one in the garden or on a terrace. But once constructed there is sometimes the problem of where to but quality fish and weeds.
So after seeing a friends amazing new pond stocked with wonderful shoals of fish we searched out and visited Aqua Mania run by an enthusiastic Belgium Bruno de Peet . Aqua Mania breed import and sell gold fish, tench, sturgeon and Koi carp from sizes for small ponds to giants for big ponds which they can design and build. They can ship fish anywhere in Spain by a special overnight delivery service. They are also interested in garden centres interesting in stocking their fish and plants.
In the first instance visit their website
www.aqua-mania.eu and then contact Bruno on 650802892.
Hopefully soon there will be less snails and more fish around the golf courses.
CLODAGH AND DICK’S BEST SELLING BOOKS
‘Your Garden in Spain – From planning to planting and maintenance’, ‘Growing Healthy Fruit in Spain’ and ‘Growing Healthy Vegetables in Spain’ can be obtained from bookshops Carrefor and from internet shops such as Santana Books, Amazon . They can also be ordered by telephone on 952 485838.
Remember there is much work to do this autumn so do it right.
© Clodagh and Dick Handscombe
www.gardeninginspain.com October 2009.
