"Can we feed the slugs, daddy?"

Hopefully you're not reading this while eating your tea! For me, one of the signs of spring is when I can start using my compost bin again.

We don't have any pets at home, so in our house, feeding the slugs is the closest we get. The girls (bizarrely?) love when I take the lid off and the worms wriggle around. However, during the cold winter months, the worms and slugs bury themselves deep down in the bin and won't eat anything I give them. So the amount of rubbish we throw away grows by about a third. Now things are warming up nicely, we're back in business. I'll be digging out the compost at the bottom ready for this year's tomatoes and cucumbers, and all the peelings will go in the top to feed the next generation.

A friend of mine told me about his son-in-law who was having no luck with his composting. Being a life-long successful composter, my friend offered to take a look. There was a funny smell when he lifted the lid - turned out the son-in-law had been so horrified to see the bin "full of bugs" that he'd poured in a liberal dose of pesticide and killed everything in the bin.

My slugs, bugs and worms are great! I've also discovered that slugs make a great paper shredder for confidential post. No data thief is going to be able to get any personal information from my mail once my mini-beasts have chomped their way through it.

Now all I need are a few toads to keep any adventurous slugs from travelling from the compost bin to the veg patch at the other end of the garden.