Year 2 - Garden cleanup

I will be on holiday soon. In melbourne it will be getting very hot and with our brick yard the back garden will get very hot indeed.

My garden is looking very sad at the moment. The lettuce that was looking so good has now bolted and the cabbage and broccoli is annihilated by pests. Heres what it looks like now.




I need to protect my plants from drying out and without watering them for a week or two. This is why I have decided that I will need to mulch. Using a stray mulch is supposed to keep snails at bay so I will be using pea straw.

Today I bought pea straw here are photos of my garden before and after mulching.

Slugs are being just greedy

Look at the state of one of my cabbages!

As much as I want everything in my garden to be happy and harmonious. I am finding the slugs to be particularly greedy. This is just taking the pss. Any suggestions?