Looking around gardening websites produces a good crop of "advice". I can't resist posting this one:

"This tip about carrot fly sounds so daft I almost did not post it but it's true and it works..

If you suspect that the dreaded carrot fly has got past your defences, your netting and smell diversions and is living within your carrot fortress. Then place some bits of mirror along and between your rows of growing plants .The idea is that the female carrot fly will see her own reflection and charge at it knocking herself out!

Then you come along and remove her. I know you think I am kidding but I swear it's true, give it a go."

Thank goodness I don't grow carrots!

Any other "wacky" tips you have come across?

Soak grass seed in whisky before sowing - it comes up half cut!

Oldies but goldies. Cheers, Tony.

Not strictly gardening related, but it does involve a vegetable. My late mother in law always placed half an onion on the windowsill at the start of the winter, she believed it warded off colds and flu.

A wacky garden related joke. The only 'mucky' joke my mam ever told me.

A newly married couple, she doing the washing up and he doing a bit of planting in their new garden. As she watched her man sowing the crops, she was astonished to see every so often while sprinkling the seed he would stand up and unzip his fly take out his penis, tuck it back in and carry on sowing vegetable seed.

Her curiosity getting the better of her, she opened the window and asked what he was doing. "Just following the instructions on the packet my love, sow thinly and prick out" ! ! ! Cheers, Tony.

To get this thread back on to its intended track: here's something from my favourite Austrian pseudo-philosopher/scientist/agriculturalist, Rudolph Steiner.. I know I have quoted it before on the forum, but it's worth another airing now.

How to get rid of mice
“Catch a fairly young mouse and skin it ...
You must obtain this skin when Venus is in the sign of Scorpio ...
Carefully collect the ash and other constituents that remain from the burning ...
Sprinkle it over your fields ...
You will find this an excellent remedy.”

I'm not making this up, honest! It's all here http://wn.rsarchive.org/Lectures/Agri19 ... index.html

Crush some extra strong mints and lay the resulting powder on top of the soil when you plant your pea seeds.

The smell of the mints means the mice cannot find the pea seeds.

I have tried this and it works

alan refail. Is he writing these articles from some sort of institution.

Well I recall reading ages ago that mothballs woul discourage mice in greenhouses and garages because they couldn't stand the smell of them (don't know if it's true or not) and to throw a few mothballs around amongst your lettuces to discourage slugs.

Don't know if you can still buy mothballs? Anti moth precautions usually seem to come in little discs these days that you hang up in your wardrobe.

No, SM, but you could be forgiven for thinking so. He's long dead. Biography here -

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudolf_Steiner

However, his ideas are still alive and kicking in Steiner Schools and the Biodynamic movement.

It's akin to the Chinese medicine nonsense about rhino horn being an aphrodisiac and tiger wine - tiger bones steeped in rice wine - making you as strong as a tiger.

PS. I have a freshly caught young mouse available, £25, buyer collects.

Bring it down here. I'm sure one of our local red kites would love it.

Have just read in the paper that a red kit not a million miles from here actually swooped down & pinched a sausage that was cooking on a barbeque. These birds are getting too pesky for comfort.

A young woman nearly lost her 4.5lb Pomeranian dog to one, it made several attempts and according to one report had a second go the following day. Telegraph report with photo

So that's a new tip!
If your garden is overrun with Pomeranians encourage red kites as natural predators