How Does Your Garden Grow?

[DAPPH]

Whilst beer appears great for the big slugs around the outside of the bed, I've loads of tiny, shiny black ones and equally destructive, lightly bigger, white ones inside.

This little black one nigh on felled a plant on its own:

https://flic.kr/p/2pUJweC

https://flic.kr/p/2pUGNCk

Another decimated:

https://flic.kr/p/2pUJX7Q

Them little sods can grow to 4 inches long if you keep feeding them. Buy and use some nematodes //lash out at about a tenner a pop and program for treatment three times at thirty days apart when the ground is wet and able to absorb the nematodes. use a hose or watering can to wet it if needed.

Ancient Uncles Jack & Frank in the 1960's ( now dec'd in their early 90's) ) used to store soot from the annual chimney sweeping session in a heap in their garden , leaving it open to the weather for a year to weather out some of the strength of it to prevent it burning plants . Gardening with coal fire soot was a common practice for slug & snail control .

Come Autumn they used the previous autumn's sweepings to sprinkle on the new manured ground and save some to sprinkle around their Christmas Celery which was usually wrapped / collared up in news paper & banked up with soot treated soil to as few inches of top leaf .
If it got really frosty they also covered the banked plants in four to six inches of clean straw along with covering wintering carrots . I can't ever recall them complaining about slug's or snails .

As a just turned four year old ( 1954 ) I can recall the excitement of Jack & Frank going out to their garden on Christmas afternoon just before dark and bringing in a massive hand of white celery for a boxing day home raised & cooked boiled ham lunch , washing it in the stone kitchen sink and giving me a stick sprinkled with salt . Yum Yum .. The ham was set to gently boil for boxing day and came from one of dads reared pigs ......... Food rationing was still in force but out in the country not so strictly enforced.

 

[DAPPH]

Olha has just come in from the garden, " Davey the slugs have eaten all the baby cabbages and radish ."

THIS MEANS WAR ...... .Hamas & Israel's game of thrones will look like a tea party .

Off out to watering can treat a vegetable area with a flower & non food approved slug and snail killer at double the rate .
Spray dig in then spray again and rake over in an attempt to knock the sods down considerably ready for sowing more direct in the ground as well as sowing some pots of seed in my sterile growth medium inoculated with lechate from my bin of rotting veg matter .

 

[The_Yellow_Ardvark]

The slugs at the MIS Allotments were bad.
They brought in 8 chickens, every other day.
They are now under control.

 

[DAPPH]

How many chickens did the slug carry in ?

 

[Pigeon_Droppings2]

2 weeks ago I'd just finished the greenhouse but not sealed it...the rain came and it filled with about 3 dozen slugs escaping the weather!

After that the beer traps caught maybe 2 dozen more...finally the traps are looking empty so hopefully getting under control.

Me beets aren't looking good...hopefully they can recover!

I've noticed they don't really like wood chip...the beets surrounded with chips are mostly untouched it seems.

 

[MattF]

After that the beer traps caught maybe 2 dozen more...

I used to have doubts that beer traps work. I noted its attraction to slugs, however, when I dropped the cap from my beer bottle last year, thinking I'll pick it up shortly, & within a minute, there was a slug on it. Must've been quicker than Linford. It was nowhere in sight 'til then.

 

[Greeves246]

Try horticultural or alpine grit as a top dressing . Had one of my Alstroemeria show slug damage and was looking bit grim. Put a grit dressing round them and it has caught up and looks really healthy.

 

[Seadog]

slug's or snails

Why oh why?

 

[DAPPH]

I used to have doubts that beer traps work. I noted its attraction to slugs, however, when I dropped the cap from my beer bottle last year, thinking I'll pick it up shortly, & within a minute, there was a slug on it. Must've been quicker than Linford. It was nowhere in sight 'til then.

Of course beer traps work just look at the big fat slugs at the bar in any pub .

The cover wasn't even moved so something (things) small. We get stoats too.

Noted late last night that with the McEwan's gone the slugs are starting on the toffee apple cider which they didn't touch the first night. Guessing the McEwan's smells stronger, more "yeasty"? The cider tbh smells very chemically. Maybe it needs a day for that to dissipate? Either way it proves slugs aren't that fussy!

Lidl tonight for their cheapest 5% lager in the small bottles.

I might have to rig the cheapo wildlife camera up.

Shrews perhaps a shrew can easily walk through a 1/2 circular hole , the dead one I found my cat playing with today looks as though from the contents of its gut its been eating slugs .

 

[Onoff]

Yesterday I smashed a whole clove of garlic, chucked it in the pump up garden sprayer and added 2L of hot water from the tap. Then I left it in the hot sun and went to the pub for a couple of hours. About 8pm last night I gave each bean plant a liberal spray with garlic water.

This morning there were 3 large 'ish slugs on the patch but not on the beans, just happily crawling elsewhere. No visible, further damage to the plants though.

 

[OJCar]

each bean plant a liberal spray with garlic water

and now I have a pile of dead vampires to dispose of...

 

[Onoff]

and now I have a pile of dead vampires to dispose of...

Ash is good for the garden.

 

[Onoff]

Someone up the pub yesterday suggested a band of sharp sand deters slugs.

 

[The_Yellow_Ardvark]

Ash is good for the garden.

Good to make furniture as well,

 

[The_Yellow_Ardvark]

Someone up the pub yesterday suggested a band of sharp sand deters slugs.

No it doesn't, their slime protects them.

 

[brewdexta]

The missus picked up 20 ice cream tubs from a friend yesterday. After a bit of craft knife action, they are now installed as slug pubs, there must be about 30 now. I think some enterprising slug will soon put a bus on for slug/stag/hen parties.

 

[Greeves246]

Mate took these in his garden the other day

 

[OJCar]

MWitA informs me I need to weed one of the Land Rovers.


She also said something very rude ( I was shocked ) about the advice to use grit to keep the slugs away from your plants ...

 

[Kram]

To change the subject away from slugs...

I am trying an Aldi fruit bag to hopefully, protect some of the cherries. The other ones are a bit too spread out to put another bag on them. Sour cherries so may not be worth any effort.

This is the ash, seems to be doing well but the new growth doesnt appear to be hardening up and I am wondering it it will all drop off again when the first winter frost hits.

I have two small oak saplings I replanted, they dont seem to be doing well, no fresh growth on one and the leaves gone crispy on the other. I suspect the roots are damaged and just need time, if they will recover.

 

[DAPPH]

The missus picked up 20 ice cream tubs from a friend yesterday. After a bit of craft knife action, they are now installed as slug pubs, there must be about 30 now. I think some enterprising slug will soon put a bus on for slug/stag/hen parties.

Slugfest 24 , runs along side the Labour party ????