''Sluggish'' encounters

'' Rain, rain go away, come again some other day ...''

This week has been a favorable one for slugs (and slug picking). You'd think ' What is she on about?' It's hardly been a month since I moaned about how dry our spring was and how walking around with a hose was a daily routine. Well, just for that, someone up there has decided to pick on yet another gardener and send down oodles of rain, thunders, hail, and that dulling humidity. I've been reading about all the tornadoes and mad storms in the US and realized that we don't even know how lucky we are, we have had some bad summer storms, trees flying about and stuff but we literally don't know the meaning of the word 'twister' and all that horror. We've got subway crossings under water, cars stuck in flooded roads, river Sava flooding its outer beds, a serious flood danger after too much rain, but at least our homes don't fly away. And we can only stand in awe and shock watching the aftermath of Myanmar cyclones and similar disasters. So I think we are rather fortunate in that matter.


And now back to slugs, my primary focus this week. Why did I choose them as my topic today? Was it for the fact that I have just found a dozen of gigantic slugs (bigger than me) in my Hosta bed? Or maybe it was the whole part of the Lupin bed that has mysteriously disappeared just when it was about to display its wonderful blooms? Or is it the horror in the veg garden and the salad beds? It's all that, and then some. My dad is quite brutal when it comes to slugs, he goes about with his mini-torch and just burns them to death, or stabs them on the long metal bar while creating his very own type of shish kebab. He's also one of those people who think beer traps are a serious waste of beer. Years ago I've talked him out of using the non-organic, highly toxic and wrongly tagged 'wildlife-friendly' slug pellets, making quite an effort to prove that there is no such thing if it consists of Metaldehyde and methiocarb, a pair of mean killers that allow no antidotes. Never mind the victim. I have also found it quite cruel to put salt on slugs. It just seems way too brutal and painful for any living being to experience. And slugs are, after all, living beings, with a bad and incurable habit to pick on gardeners and spoil their flowery dreams. Being greedy is yet another of their many virtues, but then again, who are humans to preach about greediness. My favourite weapon of revenge are the beer traps (at least they die drunk and happy), Diatomaceous earth and the likes of it, whose effect fades away with first drops of rain, just as fast as they cross the copper wire.

munching away on Kniphofia

Sometimes I just throw them over the fence. They probably don't endure much longer over there as my omnipresent neighbour walks about with scissors cutting them in half. Did I mention her before? She's a lovely old lady with a spirit and zeal of a teenager (and a pair of scissors in her pocket, ever since I talked her out of using slug poison too), who spends days and days protecting and loving both her perennial and vegetable garden, and proudly fights the handicaps her age has afflicted upon her. I know it is impossible to get rid of them once and for all, I think our moist climate even with the extremes of hot and cold is still idyllic for them. The only method I haven't tried and am thinking of trying are Nematodes, but that also seems a painful death. Any experience anyone?



Did you know that...

• each cubic meter of soil contains about 200 slugs
• slugs have approximately 25 000 teeth
  
• slugs consume around twice their body weight per day
• they can have up to 90 000 grandchildren ( talk about baby boom)
• some slugs only live on rotting vegetation so those in the compost heap, you should leave them be
  
• young slugs stay underground feeding on humus and waiting for hasty gardeners to plant their young seedlings
• everything you kill would have been someone/something else's lunch

Ain't I pretty ?

I have always preferred snails to slugs. And I still find it that the damage that they do cannot compare to the slugzillas. Or maybe, with all the slugs in the 'hood, they never got the chance to show all their skills. After all, they carry their entire household on their back. Extra points for eempressive! Anyhow, I always leave them be.


The bottom line, I don't moan at slugs (not really, it's just that I collected 53 off a single head of lettuce), as much as I moan about the weather. The continual damage that Homo sapiens has unleashed upon this planet is finally blown into our faces. The Mediterranean climate, or any other, is hardly what it was before, we can have disastrously dry and barren years, and then again we can live on the verge of floods for ages and have waterlogged gardens. As far as the slimy buggers are concerned, I know I haven't done and am constantly NOT doing all I can to prevent the wreak havoc in the veg garden as well as my flower beds, a few beer traps here and there will not save the day, and I'm way too dispirited to start a brewery of me own. My dad is away on a business trip so no grilling or stabbing either, I'd definitely say the guys are having a feast of their lives. And as for hedgehogs, they must have realized by now that there's just too many slimy buggers out there and they just cannot keep up with their amoeba-like reproductive capabilities. I know we all have different climates, different gardening conditions, different slug populations, but I also know for those of us who love 'grooming' perennials in moist conditions, they are enemy number one.

Plant of the day: Hosta 'perforata'

SLUGBUSTERS: Ailing Slug Ale

If there's something every gardener loves to hate, it's gotta be a slug. These slimy creatures are every gardener's scourge. Personally I have nothing against slugs. As long as they don't mess with my plants. And still then I don't have the heart to kill them with my own hands so I prudishly let the traps do it for me. Sometimes I feel merciful and just pick them up and throw them over the neighbour's fence ( "carry on fellas, you'll be better off amid his salad beds ") . Slugs can ruin tender young vegetables in just a few nights of munching away. But that's not how they got their beer bellies. They will drink themselves to death when you offer them this aromatic concoction. Although it's best to do this in autumn to reduce their population and prepare yourselves for spring when gardens are brimming with young, tender plants that slugs like best, anytime's a good time.

INGREDIENTS & SUPPLIES:

• 1 quart unpasteurized beer
• 1 tablespoon sugar
• 1 teaspoon baking yeast
• plastic milk jug or large glass jar
• fifteen 1-quart plastic yogurt containers

DIRECTIONS:

1. Mix ingredients together in the milk jug or jar. If you're not sure whether the beer is unpasteurized or not, check the bottle label.
2. Let the mixture sit in a warm place for a few days (70°F/21°C), until you see bubbles form
3. While the mixture is brewing, make some slug traps by cutting openings 1 inch high x 2 inches wide in the sides of the yogurt containers (see illustration)
4. Pour the beery brew about ½ inch deep into the yogurt containers and replace the lids
5. Bury the yogurt containers around your garden so that the openings in the sides are about ¼ inch above the soil line
6. You'll have enough brew to fill about 15 slug traps

NOTE: When setting the traps, make sure that the windows in the traps are just a little higher than ground level to keep ground beetles from falling in. Ground beetles eat slug eggs, so the more of them you have, the better. Empty, clean and refill the traps every 3 days; slugs like fresh beer (who doesn't), they won't go in there if it smells like bacteria.

(from the book ' Great garden formulas')

Other solutions that work for me, from time to time:

• diatomaceous earth ( (tiny fossilized skeletons of ancient aquatic diatoms): when slugs come in contact with it, it is abrasive to their skin;the tiny, sharp-edged granules cut the soft-bodied slugs and cause them to dehydrate; reapply after each rainfall for it is most effective when used in dry conditions and has little effect when it absorbs moisture
• sawdust, wood ash, crushed egg-shells, pine needles, builder's sharp sand
• encourage frogs into your garden pond (and teach cats not to eat them)
• hand-picking
• putting a sign ' SLUGS YOU CAN END IT ALL HERE' in my veg garden
• do not rely on your garden hedgehogs to eat them (although they mainly eat beetles and caterpillars not slugs and snails; they will only eat slugs if starving) as the slugs are the primary carriers of lungworm which is the biggest killer of hedgehogs except for demented humans and their careless behaviour; when the lungworms breed inside the hedgehog they rapidly multiply, fill the hedgehog's lungs and the hedgehog dies in agony from a fatal type of pneumonia or bleeding from the lungs
• no pesticides welcome