This winter I'm praying for lots of really hard frosts. Never mind that my tender echiums and bananas will surely bite the dust, and that the greenhouse heater will chug through gallons of paraffin. What this garden needs right now is a thorough dose of freezetherapy to purge it of the critters which have laid waste entire plantings of crops. And I don't mean greenfly: those are polished off by the ugly-duckling larvae of the snazzy hoverflies and dandyish ladybirds which colonise this pesticide-free zone. No, I'm talking about slugs. Again.
Six months ago, when I reported in this column on my skirmishes with the slippery brutes, I could not have imagined how the sodden summer would bring the worst invasion in years. And now, as the relentless blobby battalions continue to pillage the plants (slugs remain active at temperatures as low as five degrees Celsius), C), I am on the verge of surrender. If this winter doesn't produce enough freezing, mollusckilling weather, possibly the only way to salvage some pleasure out of this garden is to redevelop it as an open farm for gastropods, a sort of sluggy pets' corner.
Because really, I have a grudging fondness for slugs (and snails too, of course, as they lug around their little self-contained residences). The slug is one of nature's more adaptable and ingenious works of engineering: when resting or threatened, it balls itself up into a tough, leathery hump. And when it decides to move off, it can stretch out to 11 times its length, its glistening skin far more durable and elastic than the most advanced Lycra.
When it is cold, the creature shovels itself into the soil, exudes a protective film of mucilage, and hibernates. In hot, dry weather it goes for a nap again - this time known as aestivation. And as for sex . . . Well, because all slugs (and snails) have both sets of reproductive tackle, everybody gets pregnant, after some very complicated foreplay. Then, both partners go off to loose soil, or into a plantpot full of compost, and lay clutches of a couple dozen delicate, pearly eggs. The eggs can last through a normal winter (which is why I'm hoping for a particularly vicious one) and when the weather warms up, out hatches a new generation of baby sluglings, dainty replicas of their parents.
LAST June, two reliable references informed me that a square metre of garden could harbour up to 200 slugs, and when I reported this a couple of readers raised their eyebrows in disbelief. But, having conducted my own research now, I can confirm that the twosquare-metre soil-bed in my greenhouse has yielded nearly 300 slugs over the past five nights. And they are still appearing. At this rate, I'm confident of reaching the quota within days.
And that's why I feel defeated by these garden looters: their numbers are just too high for single-handed combat. But, although I may be about to throw in the trowel (for the moment anyway), my post-bag and email box tell me that other gardeners have not given up the fight. Mrs Freddie Muldoon of Deansgrange finds that thorny rose prunings and the chopped-up, razor-sharp, dead leaves of pampas grass keep her vegetable patch slug-free because "slugs and snails do not like cutting their tummies". And Orla Callaghan from Kilpedder uses long collars of plastic drinks bottles to protect her seedlings (this failed to safeguard my runner beans from steeplejacking slugs, I regret to report). Pauline Bracken drops snails into a bucket of water laced with bleach which she empties in a sterile corner of the garden, while David Doff of Newtownmountkennedy (who castigated me for snipping my slugs up with a scissors) admitted that "when I lived in the Hebrides I used to get huge black slugs crawling all over the house. I am afraid I sometimes picked them up on a shovel and popped them into the fire of the Aga". Nice one, David!
But if you think that is bad, one reader, at the mercy of "three-inch slugs and quarter-pounder snails" (and who demands to remain anonymous), has been driven to actions that exhibit an interesting combination of vindictiveness and desperation. Having unsuccessfully tried all the usual eggshell, sandpaper and grit barriers, and beer traps, she writes: "I am now at the stalking stage. Every evening, armed with trowel and stick, I catch an average of 30 in the front garden. These I line up on the road to encounter passing traffic." And the 90 or so slugs and snails that she catches in the back garden, she "pegs" over the wall "in batches of six" into the garden of the adjoining house (vacant, she says).
But I've bad news for you, Ms Anonymous. I don't know about slugs, but snails are reputed to have a homing instinct, so they're probably oozing their way back home to your garden right now. And they'll be mighty hungry when they get there.