With Wimbledon fast approaching, I've been in the strawberry patch, giving it a final weeding and making sure that slugs hiding under leaves in the soil are not ready to eat them, as they did last year!

The best thing to counter slugs is dryness, they sit at the edge of the strawberries in longer grass, then come out when it rains or once the fruit starts to appear.

Clearing any weeds away and cutting down the grass at the edges will get rid of the slug cover, drying them out in the open. A few well placed slug pellets should do the trick to catch the young ones and protect around the edges.
As you can tell, I was pretty annoyed last year to see a mass of big, red, juicy strawberries, but when it came to picking them, most had been eaten from underneath by slugs.

With the dry weather this year, I have kept the patch watered, as many of this year's plants are "new" baby plants, grown from the shoots of last years older plants. I am told that after three years the older plants start to leave smaller fruit and in less quantity, so when the shoots came off last year, I lifted a few of the six original plants I put in and made sure the shoots were spread out.
It sounds like a lot of work, but it really wasn't, just make sure the new shoots are in the soil, let them spread then cut the stems where they join the new plant.

Not bad going for six old strawberry cuttings I picked up from Dad's allotment, I now have more than 30 strawberry plants!

With April showers fast approaching, it's the time of year when I turn to choosing which plants I want to grow from seeds.

Seeds are an invaluable resource, where ever possible I'll be using a thrifty alternative to buying them in packets. I find it easier to obtain seeds from fruit and veg that I buy fresh every week on my local market greengrocers (they have less storage room so produce is normally fresh and locally sourced).

Fruit and vegetables:

• Tomatoes - easy ones these. When seeds are bought in packs, they can cost anything up to £2.99 for 20 seeds - buying a tomato from my local market, I can get around 50 seeds for just 20p
  I am planting out regular and cherry varieties, using the recycled greenhouse I got last year.
  Last year's late planting in the greenhouse, yielded a good crop of both cherry and regular tomatoes right into early November, so early planting should see us through the hotter summer months (he says hopefully!)
• Sweetcorn - I spotted them growing on one of my Dad's friends allotment last year, (I was there to rob some free comfry) they were growing to around 9 foot tall planted in triangles, in sandy untreated earth, in an uncovered area open to winds.
  I planted some into seed pots as late as September last year, to see if I could grow them in the greenhouse, they came on a treat with simple watering.
  I planted them out in the October and they grew to over 2 feet tall before the colder weather got them, so early planting this year will help.
  Fresh corn on the cob from my local market - 50p for around 100 seeds.
• Potatoes - I am going for two varieties in 2010 - King Edwards and the smaller new potatoes.
  Last year I grew some king edwards, but a neighbour's fuscia bushes roots, grew in my border like a spiders web and killed them off. It did however break up my soil and now I have excellent fine soil where last year it had lots of clay in it.
  For 2010 I will be planting them out in my "veg box" where I normally grow my peapods. The soil there is very thick and clumpy, so even if they don't do well, it will leave me with a box of fine soil ready for 2011.
  Seed wise, quartering up some old potatoes and leaving them in a carrier bag in the greenhouse for a few weeks should get them to root, they will then be ready for planting out - you can of course save potato peelings and dip them in rooting powder and plant them out, which proves to be just as successful.
• Strawberries - for the last two years, my six little cuttings I got from my dad's allotment have come on well, producing plenty of fruit, and spreading well, now I have about 20 plants for this year. I am concerned though, as I have been reliably informed that around every 3 years, I should dig up and destroy the older strawberry plants to leave room for the younger ones to grow and develop.
  This way, the fruit thats produced remains firm and fresh and keeps the strawberry plot in tip top condition?
  I plan to leave it well alone this year, just shaving it around the edges with the lawn mower to keep it in check, I will mark the older plants later in the season and remove them around September time, hopefully, the newer plants will root out in their place and next year's crop will be good?
• I have two remaining bays to fill with some topsoil and plant out - not sure what to do with them, as they get half a days sun, half a days shade.
  In my borders I will hopefully have some sweetcorn planted out, there will be room for carrots and the veg I have never successfully grown - beetroot!
  The soil is fine there now and the fuscia roots have been dug up and won't be coming back, so maybe it's time to try again?

Blackberries - last year, alongside the house where we have extended it, an old blackberry branch I planted about 3 years ago sprouted up and produced around 4 big bowls full of blackberries!
I cropped it slightly and pinned it to some lats I screwed onto the fence, which allows it to creep along and support itself. I am hoping it will develop into a hedge that helps the local wildlife and birds as well as providing me with plenty of fruit.
My thinking is, that it will be an excellent burglar deterrant?

With a full year to go at with my recycled greenhouse, I should have a more profitable year as regards fruit and veg, I have divided the borders up into 6 bays in the back garden, two are free as yet to plant out in.
The grapevines (cuttings I took when I moved the greenhouse from the garden it was left in neglected) grew well last year, in milk bottles in our kitchen, then once the greenhouse was in place, continued to do well, getting as high as two feet tall.
However wether they will continue or "come back" to life this year, remains to be seen.
I am told they shut down in winter, like old dead twigs, then come to life once the heat returns the next year?
We shall see, but whatever happens, I am hoping that my trusted comfry water, fed to all the plants once every five waterings, will fire all my seeds up and give us a bumper crop.

Our little feathered friends are out there in the big winter freeze, many starlings have young to feed, young blackbirds are leaving their winter nests, wagtails are still around as are robins and traditionally winter birds that frequent the UK at this time of year, it's vital that food supplies for them continue.
Food supplies are relatively easy to provide and can also be used to reduce the amount of rubbish thrown away in your general waste bins.

Christmas nuts:
In our house at christmas, we always have a tub of salted and dry roasted peanuts. Not in large quantities, but enough to always have some left over after the event.
Instead of throwing these away as they go stale in their little tubs, we crush them up together and mix them up with some warmed up fat/dripping/lard and put this mixture into old flora margarine tubs. Once they have cooled down, the now solid blocks are put outside for the birds.

Waste fat - dripping - lard:
We use a chip pan in our house, chips, etc, all taste better when cooked in lard or dripping.
When the fat needs changing, it used to be poured into old coffee jars and thrown our with our general rubbish.
For the past 12 months, it has been melted and poured into old margarine tubs, crushed nuts or old stale biscuits are broken up and mixed into it, then it is cooled and placed outside for the birds to eat.
Birds need fat content, it helps bulk them up and it helps with their plumage.

Bacon:
Old stale bacon rashers sitting in your fridge are an ideal food source for our feathered friends. Bacon rind, bacon fat and the bacon meat itself, are excellent fodder.
Rather than put out full rashers for the birds, cut them up into tiny pieces with scissors.
This way the local cats will not eat the bacon and bigger birds will not get all the food.
Plus, when in small pieces, the birds, who don't have much time to stand and eat remember, can take a piece of the bacon and fly back to their nest and eat it there or give it to their young, before a bigger bird or a predator comes along.

Bread:
Even stale bread is a good food source for birds. Shreaded into small pieces, birds will often leave this easy food source for a day or so, until it is softened by the weather.

Fruit:
Birds eat berries - a fact we all seem to forget when it comes to winter feeding.
Pomegranate, chopped up and put out for birds as a bit of an experiment, turned out to be a spanking food source for our local birds.
As christmas fades away into the distance, any fruit that's beginning to turn can be cut up into small segments and put out.
Lemons, apples, oranges, satsumas, etc, all will be welcomed food sources for birds this winter.

Positioning any food you put out for birds is paramount.
Avoid putting food out near trees, shrubs, bushes, hedges, etc. Anywhere that cats and other predators have cover to hide in wait for birds is a bad location.
You don't need a bird table, an old chopping board or an old roof slate are just as good, but position it out in the open, the centre of a lawn, etc, giving birds a safe place to eat.

Attracting wildlife to your garden can have huge benefits and save you money!

Slugs: Frogs and hedgehogs eat them and their eggs (laid under your soil) - a small pond close by to your habitat can sustain them and help in the constant battle against the slugs that eat your veg and plants.
Butterflies: Allowing things to overgrow a bit, seems to attract more wildlife into the garden.
Midgies: From the little pond, midgies swim around then leave the pond and fly around the garden.
Why would I want to provide a haven for these insects? There's method in the madness, we have a family of bats that live over the back, as the midgies rise as soon as dusk falls, the bats swoop down and eat them! (Don't even bother trying to photograph them, I have been trying to catch them on camera for years, not a single success story to show for it yet hehe)

The link I have included in this post (at the top) has laid out instructions for building your own.
Find a quiet corner of your garden, put down a few paving stones or flags, to provide a solid base for your habitat, turn the bottom pallet upside down and place the next pallet the right way round on top of it, this leaves a big enough space for hedgehogs to get in.

I use my habitat to get rid of grass cuttings and branches I chop off from the neighbours over hanging bushes, this provides great nesting material for the local birds, of which we have many here in Lancashire.
Kestrels, hawks, starlings, etc are common here. We have also seen blackbirds returning to feed, after years of not having them around because of building work dug up most of the natural landscape to the rear of our garden. If you provide materials and foods for them they will come back to any area.
We have even had a rare pair of yellow wagtails feeding.

Once your habitat is in place, don't expect instant results!
It takes a bit of time for animals to find it. In our very small pond that I built alongside the habitat (It is a simple large tub half buried in the ground with pebbles placed in the bottom and around the edge of it) we had to bring in frogspawn, the tadpoles seemed to thrive on it, still swimming around as late as November!
If frogs return to it, only time will tell, come next spring we shall find out!

So far we have had just one grey squirrel burying food around it, but it seems to like it as it provides cover for it from predators like the local cats.
Have fun with your habitat and just leave it be, let it develop its own wildlife as it surely will. Local wildlife we all saw as kids is taken for granted, but the block paving and tarmac revolution has not wiped wildlife out, but forced it to move on to other areas, building a simple habitat, we have found, gives the local wildlife a place to come back to and provides a means of existing alongside building mad Britain.

Instructions for building a wildlife habitat

Heavy snow where we live today, yesterday in the area of the garden where I put the old chip pan lard with nuts in out, we had 3 old pomegranates, which we cut up into pieces and put out "just in case" the birds would like it.

Blackbirds went straight for the old lard with nuts in it (a breeding couple we have back in our area after they disappeared for years) but the starlings loved the pomegranate!
They tore it to shreds, especially the young birds, it looks like an old carcass lying in the snow, red everywhere, but they keep coming back for more.
Always good to see not only the local wildlife thriving but a food source I didn't think the birds would take to.

Don't forget, when putting out food for birds, positioning is key. Leave food out in the middle of the garden so the birds have a fighting chance should a neighbourhood cat come along, less cover = more time for the birds to eat safely!