Rain, lovely rain! But wet weather brings out the slugs of course. Old-fashioned metaldehyde slug pellets (the usual sort you buy) is less effective in wet weather, as slugs are killed by dehydration and in rainy wetaher they can recover and crawl away. Bad news for birds, who can be killed by eating slugs containing metaldehyde, and bad news for your lettuces.

The new generation of 'organic' slug pellets gets round this problem. In years gone by, organic slug treatments were pretty ineffectual. Not so the new ones based on ferric salts. they are extremely good and actually work better in wet weather. They block the slug's gut and the slug, thinking it's had a good meal, goes somewhere quiet to digest. Except it dies instead. This is why you see no slime or corpses with the organic pellets. You'll find the bodies only if you look for them. The empty snail shells are easier to spot, of course.

Keeping newly-planted stuff and young seedlings from suffering in this weather isn't easy, especially if you work in the day and can only visit the plot in the evening.

You can help avoid plants drying out by erecting netting to give some shade and break the force of the drying wind. This is very useful for plants which don't like hot conditions, like lettuce for instance. The support doesn't need to be anything fancy as you aren't trying to completely enclose the plants, just give them some shade during the hottest part of the day and soften the effect of the wind.

For more tips on helping plants to cope with Kent's dry summers, click on Using Water Wisely to go to our advice section.