The birds in the garden are busy, busy building nests and eating their heads off – the rabbits are also busy eating all the young tender tops off everything they like. Mercifully that isn’t everything and if you cut the tops and bottoms off large clear plastic pop bottles and place them over the emerging plants it gives them a chance to get going before the rabbits can get at them. Once your emerging plants reach a certain size and maturity they don’t seem to be so attractive to a bunny out for a little tender tip bit. ….and the mole is also busy going about his/her business, digging up our lawn with glorious abandon, we tried one of the vibrating mole scare-ers and I do believe it is attracted to it – anyway we now have a ring of small mole hills surrounding it – a bit like a moley fairy ring. We did much heart searching, after heavy rain and the garden began to look like the Somme, and purchased a mole trap with springs and teeth, horrible looking thing – we needn’t have worried it also goes round that! If anyone has any idea how to shoo a mole away please let us know. Moth balls don’t work either.

I was perusing a gardening magazine the other day (as you do) and came across a good idea for preparing your wooden planters for maximum life expectancy. First place a water permeable material in the bottom of the planter (you can buy weed suppressing material from the garden centre). Then put in a good thick layer of Perlite and another layer of the permeable material on top of that. Then line the planter (on top of the Perlite sandwich), in the usual way with water proof material with drainage holes poked in to it. Fill up with loam based compost (John Innes no. 3) mixed with a little more Perlite This will prevent the base of the planter becoming waterlogged and so prolong its life. I haven’t tried it yet but it sounds like a really good idea …so I will. Watch this space!