Fighting Slugs - Feed And Fortify

#### This is a collaborative post ####

Normally when I garden I keep a good equilibrium between my plot and nature but this year nature seems to be winning, and by some margin.

Rabbits keep sneaking in and eating from the ground, pigeons devour from above, but my biggest enemy this year is the slugs from below. They are without mercy and seem to have decided that I can have nothing left when I plant out certain crops. 

What Would You Waste Less If Times Were Hard?

Of course none of it is really waste!

But when you grow your own and cook most of your meals from scratch it can certainly create some waste! Below are two buckets of "waste" that I created between Sunday and Wednesday! 

This all gets added to the compost pile and in time will really help to improve my soil. 

Because I grow so much veg I can be a little more wasteful with some of the veg, for example we eat a lot of Swiss Chard at this time of year (two times a week) but I never use the stems! We've got so much growing, it just doesn't seen worth it. 

 In the buckets above there are the leaves and peelings from cleriac, carrots, beets, chard, courgette (last one), shallots, onions and gone over apples.

If times were hard, very little of those buckets would be heading to the compost pile. Everything would be used, veg would be scrubbed before being peeled, leaves would be saved and I'd make lots of stock each time. This is potentially something I should be doing away, but there are only so many hours in the day.

The cooked peeling would then be strained, the stock saved for human consumption and the cooked peelings would be given to the chickens or other livestock. Although not with the current laws of course!

So if times were much harder what would you waste less of?

What potential food source do you throw away?

Weed Pressure Stops Me Growing More!

Dad thinks I farm nettles!

Weed pressure is what makes organic gardening on a large scale very difficult. The land has a huge seed bank of weed seeds that really take some controlling and although I'm probably dealing with it the best way possible this year I wouldn't say I'm on top of it!

Who else is suffering with weed pressure?

What do you do to stay on top of it?

Comfrey As A Weed Barrier

I've posted before about dividing up comfrey and using root cuttings to make new plants and the other night I decided to make another huge number of plants with one purpose in mind. 

Plastic down to suppress weeds. 

The idea is to grow a 4ft strip of comfrey (boking 14) down the side of my garden to create a "weed barrier". The idea being that if these plants are established it'll leave far less room for other plants to take hold (like the nettles that are there now), I'll also under sow the plants with clover as a ground cover. 

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98 root cuttings to make some more plants.

I'm not sure how well this idea will work but it seems like a good idea on the surface. It should stop the buttercups creeping their way back in and with the plastic cover this summer it should get rid of the nettles. 

On top of this I'll be growing a hugely beneficial plant right next to where I need it, I can use it as a mulch, a plant food or to go in the bottom of trenches to grow beans on top of. 

I wanted more comfrey plants and this seems like a good area to plant them.

What do you think? 

Will it work as a weed barrier?