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Daily gardening tip · Southern hemisphere · Thursday 22 October 2026 · mid spring

Protect Young Seedlings from Slugs and Snails

Warm spring nights bring out hungry slugs and snails that can destroy tender young seedlings overnight.

Protect Young Seedlings from Slugs and Snails
5 minuteseasypests
  1. Inspect your garden beds for fresh seedling growth that needs protection.
  2. Bury a small, shallow container in the soil so the rim sits level with the ground.
  3. Fill the container halfway with beer to attract nearby slugs and snails.
  4. Wrap copper tape around the edges of raised beds or individual pots as an alternative barrier.
  5. Check and empty the beer traps every few days to keep them working.
A garden in mid spring

Why it works

Slugs and snails are drawn to the yeast in beer, fall into the shallow trap, and drown before reaching your plants. Copper tape creates a natural barrier because it gives pests a mild, uncomfortable electrical sensation when they try to crawl over it.

Coral-pea

Plant of the day

Coral-pea

Hardenbergia violacea

An evergreen Australian native vine or scrambling shrub featuring glossy dark green foliage and profuse clusters of purple pea-like flowers. It climbs via twining stems or spreads as a dense groundcover across well-drained garden beds.

Read about it →

Gardening news

Gardening news

Gloucestershire town named Britain in Bloom winner 2026

A town in Gloucestershire won a national gardening award for its group effort to care for local trees with the goal of turning the whole area into a botanical tree collection.

The Dirt · 2026-10-21
New research

Duckweed keeps complex plant features in a tiny body

Scientists at the University of Nottingham studied how duckweed packs full plant structures into a body only a few millimeters wide. They found that duckweed compresses and fuses its internal organs rather than discarding them. This finding helps explain how tiny floating plants maintain the basic features of much larger species.

scitechdaily.com · 2026-10-20
On this day

The Highway Beautification Act was signed into law

On 22 October 1965, United States President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Highway Beautification Act into law. Championed by First Lady Lady Bird Johnson, the legislation aimed to limit billboards and junkyards along major roads. It also funded roadside landscaping to protect scenic views for travelers.

en.wikipedia.org

Written for the southern hemisphere. Gardening north of the equator? See the northern edition

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