PROTECTING your crops in the vegetable garden is vital if you want to avoid the damage that can be made by caterpillars, birds, slugs and snails, writes TOM ATTWOOD. It needn’t involve an armoury of unpleasant chemicals. Often, creating a physical barrier is one the best techniques such as using netting to prevent cabbage white butterflies laying their eggs on the leaves that will very quickly hatch into leaf devouring beasties set on a feasting rampage obliterating your beloved crop. Set the netting up early and you’ll enjoy watching with satisfaction as the butterflies try in vain to land but can’t and will give up and look elsewhere. From experience, the other major opponent in the veg garden is the slug or snail and again to avoid using highly toxic slug pellets use either nematodes which can be purchased online and applied to the soil surface using a watering can or alternatively use the power of beer as a lure. I find it works extremely well on me and its one of the few things I have in common with slugs. Creating a beer trap is so easy, you need an old food tin or glass jar filled with a small amount of beer. Sink this into the soil so that the rim sits just above the soil surface. Either side of the jar or tin sit three stones and place a piece of roofing slate on top so that there is a thin gap between the slate and the beer vessel. The jar becomes the final resting place for the slugs or snails and if you keep a fresh stock going throughout the season you should avoid any real damage. The other method of protecting crops is by using other plants to distract insects who home in on a crop and the chemicals that they naturally put into the air. Carrot fly can detect the chemicals released by the leaves of young carrots but if you grow alongside them a ‘companion’ plant such as the marigold it has the effect of blocking or confusing the damaging insect.

Next week: perennials for pots