If you've been doing your gardening work diligently your annual seedlings should now be thinned out and growing in weed free flower beds, well on their way to flowering in a few weeks and giving you a spectacular summer garden to enjoy.
It's not just the garden itself but all the insects and wildlife you will attract too - the sound of bees and insects plus butterfly's all add an enormous amount to any summer garden display.
While the annual seedlings are growing you'll have to be vigilant in protecting them from slugs and snails.
While still young, seedlings will not recover from these attacks and all your hard work in raising and caring for them can easily be lost.
The most common response is to protect them with slug pellets, putting them out thinly spread just before any rain is due.
The pellets will actually attract the slugs and snails to them due to a smell and it's a good idea to look for ones which are rain proof and pet friendly.
If you are against using any kind of chemicals in the garden then the only solution is to go out at night with your flashlight and actually collect the slugs and snails by hand, if it's wet they should already be well on their way or in the process of eating your seedlings! In order to keep your annual flowers in full bloom throughout the entire summer it's important to dead head.
This means removing any dead or faded flowers from each plant before it goes to seed, by not allowing it to go to seed you are forcing the plant to flower again and it will continue to re-flower for as long as you dead head or until the summer season ends.