Tuesday, May 22, 2012

Ewww! Slugs! Garden Update

All this wet weather has led to a major slug problem.  One of my full grown lettuce plants disappeared yesterday, nothing but scraps were left.  Luckily the culprit stayed at the scene of the crime long enough for me to catch it.  A slug the size of my thumb! I chucked him over the fence at the new house in that lot... I didn't mean to hit the house, I just forgot it was there for a minute! 

After a few minutes of slug hunting and removal I figured I was better off sprinkling some more bait around, some of the beasties were so tiny I just knew I wasn't going to get them all.  They eat so much!  So I baited around the most susceptible plants; lettuce, chard, cabbage.  Hopefully the bait will be more appealing than the plants for a bit.  I really should just harvest more of the lettuce before it's too late, but I already have 3 heads in the fridge and wet weather does not make me crave salad, so it may be in there a few days.

This morning I removed the cover from the pumpkin and bean bed too.  The plants had grown high enough to poke through the chicken wire and touch the row cover.  I figured I should remove it before they started growing around the wire, or got powdery mildew from contact with the wet fabric.  The plants all look great, but I damaged a couple bush beans removing the cover.  I'll just replace them this weekend, there were only a couple, and the seeds won't be far behind the ones that have already sprouted.  The pumpkins and zucchini in the bed are looking healthy and are showing some growth since they were planted. 

This weather is depressing, and rough on the garden too, can't wait for the sun to come back.

2 comments:

  1. Sorry to hear about your slug problem! Our garden is right by our pond, which means a boat-load of helpful frogs to eat up pesky bugs. However, I have had luck at our old house of burying a 1/4 full beer can near crops and leaving the top even with the soil. Those slugs really love to get their drink on.

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    1. Yeah, I know beer traps work... but we don't really drink beer so don't have it handy. We'd have to buy beer just for the slugs. Plus I have a 3 year old running around in the garden area, so slug corpse-filled beer containers are probably not a good idea. Once the weather dries for the summer they become much more manageable, it's just during the rain (which we get a lot of here) that they are a problem. For the most part the garden survives them, but they can easily decimate the lettuce and spinach in a day or two.

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