Ok, I hear you about livestock and your schedule is not (currently) arranged to keep them. If there were any nearby neighbors who were having similar problems with slugs (assuming they are gardeners), then it’s possible that they have solutions because you are all facing the same conditions. You might even be able to talk them into duck-keeping or duck-sharing!
I have friends who pay their kids or someone’s kids to pluck off bugs and slugs etc. from vegetables and drop them (the bugs! the bugs! not the kids) in a bucket of soapy water. Our hot, dry conditions in Texas are not very conducive to getting slug infestations. That said, I have heard that barrier methods like sand, diatomaceous earth, bare metal bands made of cut cans (aluminum or tin) or copper bands encircling the base of each plant, and crushed nutshells (pecan, beech, acorn) are all supposed to slow down or stop slugs in the garden.
You have such a large herd of slugs in your garden, you could probably run a trial of each method just to see if any of these work for you. The children would learn about trials and science and data-gathering. Could be useful…
Good luck, @Stynx !
I am eager to hear if there are any slug control methods that do work.
I manage a community swimming pool that has some serious aesthetic standards (not my own, heh) and have had to use something to control various undesirable bugs:
It does work. I have had rock squirrels chew through the plastic bottle, eat most of it (grrrrr!) and they seem to have zero ill effects. Sluggo Plus is organic-rated, which is one positive. I have no idea whether such a thing is available in your own country. I include it here just in case.
My Dutch is pretty rusty because my last trip (northern section of The Netherlands including Groningen and Dwingeloo where there is a fine radio observatory ) was in 1988. A lifetime ago, yes? I did manage to remember “dank u voor de” by myself but had to consult Google Translate for the rest: Dank u voor de behandeling van elk van deze.
Maybe our Texas hens are all just less picky? I dunno. There’s so little in the worm/slug/caterpillar department for them to hunt out here.
But ye gods we have a grasshopper plague that is verging on biblical and I wish I had a thousand chickens, esp. guineas. A very mild winter and abundant rains last month… those damn grasshoppers are eating my leeks, my roses, and my citrus. I know it’s just the start of it too. Usually by August everything gets chewed up, including figs with latex sap, and garlic. Freakin’ garlic!
Putting out NoloBait® is tricky because the bait must be dry for most of a day or the bastards won’t eat it. Dew and unexpected 5 minute rainshowers in the afternoon have skunked several of my deployments. Last year I had to shroud every single one of my citrus and most of my garden with sheets, pillowcases or row cover (spun polyester fiber) just to keep them from eating everything down to bare stems. Every shroud was sealed shut with zipties or with wire. The grasshoppers will chew through rope. And apparently, cotton pillowcases. Last year, in the next town over, they ate the Post-It note off my friend’s screen door, which had read “back in 10 minutes.” It was gone before she got back.
Thanks y’all for hearing me rant. I’m not much of a fan of mowing grass, but I have to say this year I am mowing like there’s no tomorrow, because I want “no quarter given, no mercy shown” toward the Acrididae spp. One more timesuck… I am considering renting goats or sheep if I can find a willing rancher:
Same in San Diego. It’s only a problem in May and June when we tend to have a lot of overcast days because of the marine layer (cold ocean + warm land = heavy overcast until it burns off.) Once the ocean warms up a little we’ll be back to our usual sunny hot days, and that’ll eliminate the slug problem.
Copper works pretty well. We have copper edging all around our lettuce beds or we wouldn’t have any left. Our crops are certified organic which pretty much eliminates any chemical suppressants.
Yeah, salting slugs is… effective… but getting all that sodium onto soil pretty much wrecks the place for growing almost any plants. I know you’ve cautioned and thanks, but I am adding my own caution here.
Dealing with slugs here, as well. They’ve destroyed the Dahlias, basil, zucchini, and strawberries, and the crazy weather made all of the broccoli and spinach bolt–so much for my salad bowl this year. I do have three other lettuces that are doing well, but I haven’t staggered the planting of any other lettuce, so once this stuff is gone, it’s all gone. And while the clematis is growing like gangbusters, it’s not producing flowers, just vines.
Still have to build a trellis for the beans (the slugs did their level best, but the beans seem to have pulled through the carnage), and one set of garlic plants basically fell over and didn’t get back up again for reasons that escape me. The soil test I bought last year is still calling my name…and oh hell, I just remembered that I never put those eggshells from my friend’s restaurant into the compost pile, so they’re still in that 5 gallon bucket.
You should be able to still get lettuce seeds to go for another crop. I picked up some more cilantro and dill seeds just the other day, and they still had a lot of stuff at the one-stop-shop grocery store.
I can attest to the toughness of koi. My Dad was remodelling the pond at our old house, as the original was over-large, tended to go green because much of it was shallow, and was not attractive. To do so he fished (pun intended) all the koi that the previous owner had put in there, including one enormous white one, and had them in a paddling pool in the carport. On the first night, at some point, Moby Dick launched himself out of the pond and spent the night under the car. When my dad found him the next morning, he seemed totally dead, but my dad dipped him in the pond to see what would happen. The moment he did so, the fish sent a jet of water over his gills and then swam off like nothing had happened.
Weirdly one of the females died immediately after spawning, which I thought was a salmon thing.
If not now, nearing the hottest parts of the year, then certainly in the early fall when I’m replanting the fall set of brassicas. I’d planned to stagger the lettuce/spinach planting ~2 weeks to get and keep a ready crop going, but I think the summer here is going to be too hot for the cooler-weather-loving plants (brassicas, lettuce, etc.).
If anything, I threw some pole beans in amongst the slug-ravaged items so I’ll have the option of letting them grow out, or turning them into the soil when I replant something else in that location.
These are the one I’m wearing, but closed, full leather, dark colored. But they look a bit differed, the thong is a bit higher. If it’s wet (like… now… and before…) I wear rubber boots, high dark green boots.
I took two cuttings from the hops vines in my front yard. I planted a rhizome in midsummer, which is kind of late, so I don’t know how hearty the plant will be through the winter. So my backup plan is to try to cultivate my cuttings indoors through the winter. If I need it, I can plant it in spring; if I don’t need it then it’s still a cool office plant
I have the cuttings sitting next to me on my desk, in a little 500ml sour cream container filled with water - I’m hoping they will root this way. The crazy thing is that they move fast enough to be noticeable. You won’t see movement if you just stare at the plants, but I peer over every once in a while, and I swear that both cuttings have done at least one and a half full rotations in the 5 hours they’ve been here. Under time-lapse, I can only assume theses things would look alive in a way I don’t normally associate with vegetation
I was planning to let them root before giving them any kind of structure to climb up, but maybe I should give them a little trellis just so they can chill out while rooting
Forgot all about this thread. The garden is winding down, and we did next to nothing going into the season, so I’m pleased to announce that I’ve canned about 31 quarts of tomato juice and about 21 half pints of pickle relish in spite of it all. Hot peppers will keep trickling in until we have a hard frost, and that’s probably 2-3 weeks out. Which is good, because the ghost and scorpion peppers have nearly matured a whole lot of fruit in the last couple weeks.
mostly because you’re the only* remaining surviver of the short-lived goat avatar fad. and in my world insanity is a favourable property, it’s a shortform for persons with a distinct and interesting view on the topics at hand.
