I just wanted to enquire in here about insects, weeds and elevation...
About 7 years ago we used to live at the top of the hill from where I live
now, we'd lived there for 30 years and in all that time I never saw one
snail, in fact I thought we lived in a part of the country where they hadn't
yet conquered, yet down here there are millions of the buggers - I only live
400 yards away from where I used to live!
The hill is about 40 feet in total height...we only ever had tiny black or
pale brown slugs, yet down here they are up to four inches long and an inch
thick, either bright orange or black...the soil down here is very sandy
underneath, up there it was a heavy clay type soil...is elevation to blame
for this or is it the soil type? - I'd have thought that with the extra
drainage down here they would be *less* suited than up there where rainwater
seemed to take days to get through the clay...also down here, there are a
hell of a lot more weeds, dandelions and horsetails being predominant along
with nettles, hardly any of these shown their faces much when living higher
up, we seemed to have more of those round leaved things (I've no idea what
they're called but they get a longish yellow seed stalk from the middle),
also we had buttercups and thistles aplenty but down here they don't seem to
get established(I'm not complaining!)...