It's been a little while since we spoke about the back garden so just to quickly recap we were digging a hole the size of the Grand Canyon and poorly started to prepare a new flower bed. Continuing on with the barron flower bed in question I'd say it's time to finish it off and get some plants in that sucker.
After realising the error of my ways I begun to dig about a spade deep into my clay soil and piling it at the back of the garden. Only this time I was layering 4-5 pages of newspaper, wetting the pages with a watering can (so you're not chasing rogue paper round the garden like a headless chicken) and then pouring a fresh layer of bought multi purpose compost over the newspaper. As I previously mentioned in my 'The Saga Continues' post in September you can also use a weed membrane but newspaper is much cheaper and most people have a stack readily available. Plus recycling and all that jazz, might as well find some use for the 'Sun' because it's clearly not made for reliable journalism. Enough media bashing for now I'll leave that to the Donald, newspaper is biodegradable so it will decompose in the soil eventually. I also put down a thick layer of bark mulch to help suppress weeds and deter those S.O.B slugs (I'll explain why they're S.O.B's later).
The plant that I removed from the front garden was actually flourishing with bright pink flowers in its new home, as seen in the first image here. I need to actually find out what it's called as it was our old gardener Alan that planted it. I guess seeing this plant in full bloom was an important moment for me as it was the end of summer in 2014 and it was proof that I could possibly be good at this gardening malarkey. Next I planted various other scented / edible plants including Lavender, Oregano and Thyme.
Now I can formerly introduce you to my arch nemesis... Batman has Joker, The Turtles have Shredder, I have Slugs!! Slugs are a gardeners enemy because any new growth you plant that isn't strong enough to fight off their advances will be removed and destroyed swiftly by them. So every one of those herbs I planted were gone in about a week or so thanks to hungry slugs. There is also no bulletproof way to prevent them from killing your plants, each method is either temporary or a deterrent at best. I'm so happy I am not a gardener I don't have to concern myself with such FAKE NEWS...
[GARDENING TIP] So slugs... If you want to get rid of them you need to work out if you want do it naturally or go chemical. I would recommend natural if you are dealing with edible herbs/ veg but I find that most methods are fairly useless anyway. The best techniques are slug pellets, wool pellets like 'Slug Gone, cracked egg shells, gravel, a ground level dish of beer or bark chip mulch. All these methods will only work for a short amount of time so the real solution is vigilance. Keep removing slugs from your garden whenever you find them and hopefully your flower bed will be in full bloom in no time.
