Weeding the Web

Snails' homing instinct foiled!

Just a quickie, following my last post about Ruth Brooks’ research into homing snails.

To those whose bowling arm isn’t quite up to sending the little pests the requisite 300 feet, a letter in last Saturday’s Daily Telegraph might be of interest.

Tristan Gooley wrote to say that scientists have shown that snails lose their sense of direction if shaken in a bag.

So, a quick jiggle courtesy of Mr Sainsbury and back to pouring them over the fence?

Snails travel over 300 feet to continue chomping on cabbages

The search for Britain’s Best Amateur Scientist has ended with the award going to Ruth Brooks, for her experiment into the homing instincts of snails, which I wrote about last month.

Four finalists presented their findings to scientists at the British Science Festival in Birmingham last Tuesday and judges were impressed by the way her experiment had been set up and had engaged so many, including children.

As she said at the Festival, “Gardeners’ lore says that if you eject snails from your garden they then return.” The question was to find out whether the apparent homing instinct was merely a random movement towards food.

Having established in her own garden that the movement certainly wasn’t random, she then moved on to try to discover the distance that snails would travel. "On the evidence so far, it would be safe to take them beyond 100 metres or further and put them somewhere luscious for snails and then they won't come back.”

She described taking part in the experiment as exhilarating, challenging and scary. It’s also jolly useful for all those of us who knew they returned, but just weren’t sure from what distance. Lobbing snails more than 300 feet sounds something of a challenge, unless you're in training for the Olympic Javelin, so it looks as if the answer is collecting them in a bucket and sending them off to that “luscious” place. This does not mean the cabbage patch five doors down…

End-of-season discounts on Henchman products

Here’s a quick nudge for anyone with a yen for something to aid hedge-cutting or fruit-picking.

Not being very keen on scaling ladders, I’ve always had my eye on those with platforms that give you a much sturdier base. Henchman specialise in these, their designs having been kicked off in 1994 by owner Tom Kitching’s GCSE woodwork project, a hedge-cutting platform.

Unfortunately neither my wallet nor garage space have quite stretched to them. So I just have to remind myself not to stretch too far on a ladder!

However, anyone with a bit more cash than I might like a look at their website. At the end of the summer, after all the fairs and garden shows, Henchman offer demonstration models at marked-down prices and they currently list quite a bit of kit, including aluminium Hi-Step ladders, Compost Tumblers, barrows, log splitter, shredders, waterbarrow and raincatcher tank. You’ll have to phone to find out the sale price.

All units are in full working order, with their full guarantee intact. There are only a few of each item available, so don't hang around if you're interested.

If you do miss a bargain, they’ve also currently got some special web prices on their Hi-Step Ladders (prices start at £325) Tumbler Composters, Water Barrow and Barrow Trailers.

How to Grow Food in Your Polytunnel by Mark Gatter and Andy McKee

Out this week is How to Grow Food in Your Polytunnel by experienced polytunnel owners Mark Gatter and Andy McKee.

I don’t usually recommend anything I haven’t yet read myself, but this is definitely worth a look. Not only is it published by Green Books, who release such useful and excellent tomes as Charles Dowding’s Organic Gardening The natural no-dig method (and, incidentally, currently offer 20% discount on purchases of £30 or more), but Andy writes the Hedgewizard’s Diary which I referred to as a useful resource in my last post, Dead Hedge and Leaf Fence.

If you haven’t visited Hedgewizard’s Diary yet, then do; recounting the experiences since 2006 of a pagan family’s “journey towards self-sufficiency in fruit and vegetables” in Dorset, Andy—“an optimistic idiot with a spade”—offers a very funny and engaging read.

And Amazon’s Look Inside facility on the Polytunnel Handbook, this time with authors’ names equitably swapped to Andy McKee and Mark Gatter, shows that their books are just as engaging as his blog.

Dead Hedge and Leaf Fence - composting wood and leaves

Autumn being the time for tidying and trimming, many gardens will soon be generating a lot of woody prunings and dead leaves.

Most garden trimmings should go in the compost, but thick branches and some leaves take forever to break down. Leaves are best composted separately to make leaf mould, and you can put some branches through a chipper but, if they’re a little too thick for that, and a bonfire is out of the question, then it looks as if all you’ve got left is a trip to the dump.

But how about a dead hedge? These days, much emphasis is placed on dead hedges as wildlife havens and for conservation. The Roseberry House Project in Dulwich Park has one, made up from trees cleared to make an educational allotment. And on Thursday 15th September, in Whitehouse Woods, Lea Valley and Waltham BCTV will be cutting down holly and making a dead hedge to act as a barrier around an area of regeneration.

Masterly Writing on Weeding the Web

I write like
Mark Twain

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

We may have left the silly season of August, but here’s a fun website for a wasted moment.

I Write Like analyses your writing and tells you whose style yours most resembles. So, in the interests of posterity, I thought it only fair to let you, my public, in on the influences that have seemingly formed my priceless prose.

According to the review of I Write Like at the Good Web Guide, when famous authors’ work was entered the following results appeared: “Shakespeare writes like Shakespeare, Margaret Atwood like David Foster Wallace, Frank Kafka like James Fenimore Cooper”.

Pretty accurate, then.

It would seem that when Putting the Cat Out I channeled Cory Doctorow, during the Gardener’s Teabreak I leant towards Margaret Attwood, thinking of digging a pond cast my lot in (possibly percipiently) with Stephen King and  Shed of the Year classed me with Arthur Clarke, who sounds remarkably mundane until you insert a C in the middle.

I had no idea I was so talented! Still, none of these quite hit the mark and I delved into the archives. I now have the definitive answer: I can now Take on the World under the aegis of Mark Twain.

Read me, guys, and weep.