In the garden this week: Slugs and muck-spreading

Up your slug patrol Spring is when slugs do their worst damage, but crack down on them in autumn and you will have a lower population when it matters, plus they'll do less damage to autumn-sown seedlings. This is your last opportunity to order Nemaslug , the nematodes that you water on to the ground and that seek and destroy, so you don't have to. Like slugs, they work best when the ground is warm and moist, so you don't have long. Muck-spreading time Allotment soil works hard – all those annual crops are constantly removing nutrients and minerals and depleting organic matter. Adding well-rotted manure puts them back in, the vital organic matter making every soil from dry sand to claggy clay crumbly and workable. Now is the time to spread it across bare soil, or roughly work it in, so it can mellow and be worked in by the worms before spring planting. Ask around your allotment site for a supplier who will deliver direct.