Winter is a good time to get garden pests under control so that they don't become a massive problem over spring and summer. We have two pest problems in the garden at the moment: aphids and snails/slugs. You can see on our Brussels Sprouts plant below that the aphids have become absolutely rampant! There are a few ways to treat them, and we tend to either hose them off the plants or spray them with eco-oil (pictured below), an organic pest spray. Snails and slugs are also an issue - we know because we can see their silver trails on the leaves of the plants. At our last working bee we used two different approaches to stop them: beer traps and egg shells. Beer traps are containers that sit at soil level and are filled with beer; this attracts snails and slugs to the trap where they drown. The traps have a lid to keep water and debris out, but you could do this with any old container - you'd just need to keep a closer eye on it. Another approach is to place crushed egg shells (or coffee grounds) around the base of plants, the idea being that snails and slugs will be reluctant to crawl across the sharp edges to the plant.
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