I’m lucky enough to have a large lean-to greenhouse which was put up by a previous owner of our house in the mid 1950s. It leaks a bit and has a heating system that is totally unaffordable. But I love it.
It also houses four dessert vines – two each of red and white. Both date back to when the greenhouse was erected and are as tough as old boots. The fruits themselves are not really worth growing as they are full of seeds and most of them simply rot on the vines. They do, however, provide excellent dappled shade for my tomato, aubergine and pepper plants in the heat of the summer.
Last weekend was the time for the annual prune. Try as we might, they throw out the most enormous runners that, if not controlled, stretch right across the greenhouse roof to the back brick wall. Clearing these whilst tilting, like an overweight ballet dancer, on ancient step ladders, is bad enough. But when you crawl under the staging to the roots – that’s where the real problem is – suckers from the base. These four ancient vines must have thrown up at least ten each during the summer. Because they grow behind the now redundant heating pipes, it is the very devil to reach them with secateurs. But several hours and many grazed and snicked fingers later, the job was done. Well, at least, part of it.
By now the floor and staging was absolutely covered with the prunings and vine leaves. It was whilst clearing these up into bags for carting to the tip that I noticed them – the unwelcome visitors. Vile slugs of all shapes, colours and sizes plus their mobile home carrying cousins.
I have already brought various container plants to overwinter in the unheated greenhouse and, before bringing them inside, carefully checked the bottom of the pots for slugs and snails. So, these have emerged from the actual pots. We are housing four standard bay trees that I have grown from cuttings and are now about six or seven feet high, various herbs for Mrs GG, a lovely myrrh that is several years old, plus a couple of olive plants, all in pots of assorted sizes. I have also brought in six handkerchief trees grown from seed collected in Madrid’s botanic garden on a trip several years ago.
So plenty of potential house room for my unwelcome visitors. From beneath the vine cuttings I must have collected a couple of dozen slugs and snails. But when I lifted up the plant pots there were a load more. I put them all in a plastic buckets and shook them out at the bottom of a field several hundred yards from our boundary and even farther from the greenhouse. Lets hope they like it down there and stay.
In the meantime, I shall double my slug and snail watch inside my lovely old greenhouse.
One of the more unusual plants that lives permanently in there is a banana trees given by our daughter. In the winter I move it against some plastic covered wire netting on the back wall – the sort of stuff that goes around tennis courts. When real penetrating cold is forecast, I clip horticultural fleece to the netting with old clothes pegs and wrap it round the plant, securing the same way on the other side. It seems to work.
Happy Gardening!
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