Oooh, the indestructible St John's Wort in the garden is budding. It's growing in the wrong place (hence I know it's indestructible) but it is very photogenic.
It's a slug party,
and I've bought them all a beer
Let's invite them to come right over,
and have a great cheer
It was the cheapest beer they sell nearby
But for a party it will fly
The question is really,
Will they just get drunk, or die?
But not in the way you think, at least in my experiment (sample size n=1).
The beer attracts slugs, and saw dozens of slugs climb INTO the slug trap, drink beer, and leave much fatter.
The wood rat in the backyard (after swigging a bunch of beer itself) then ATE a bunch of those slugs... must have spent 15 minutes finding all the beer filled slugs and tearing them to bits and eating them.
So, the slugs are dead... but not DIRECTLY through the beer.
Oh geez. Well, if you ever wanted to watch slugs getting rip roaring drunk on beer (and not actually getting trapped by said beer)... here you go. h/t @stfn#slugs#gardening#beer
I served some beer for the slugs outside
Hoping it would work to give them a ride
To the great beyond where the big slugs go
And finally stop eating the squash and tomato
Unfortunately it appears I have gone too far
And built a great happening slug bar
Where the beer is cheap and the music is great
And you can stay out all night with your hot slug date
@msquebanh We only ever make jelly with black currants - it's like Proust's madeleines for my partner. But we've already made great rhubarb and dandelion soda this year.
Wind yesterday blew the sugar pea vines off the trellis, so I harvested all the pods I could and strung the vines back up. Then used some of the pods for a stir fry, along with fresh garlic I recently harvested. 😋 #Gardening#GrowYourOwn#Organic
Giving it another go with an Abutilon picsoni "Thompson's Maple". I dug the mother of all holes, amended the soil like heck, positioned the root ball, and back-filled. Followed by repeated watering. It's somewhat sheltered by an old Mock Orange. #gardening#perrenials#flowers#California
@MsMerope@ai6yr well this is a tad hilarious: in some of the older east Davis neighborhoods, sewer lines that run from houses to the municipal lines were made of lengths of rigid cardboard tubes impregnated with wax and tar (think of tube forms for making concrete pillars). Folks I knew had to replace their 40 year-old line after one of their shade trees finally destroyed the line. They were shocked to learn what it was made of. I think the codes have likely improved.
@BrunoMcGee@MsMerope There are a LOT of neighborhoods here are still on that tube (Orangeburg Pipe). Walked by a house a few months ago with a massive failure. Expensive. It's made out of wood pulp and asbestos fiber. Terrible idea.
@cvvhrn Yes, the wine grapes are subject to root rot -- vineyards use grafted plants. I don't know how long this one will survive here, the table grapes from this year are far more likely to keep on going (the wine grapes specifically are prone to what it is... I have to go look it up.)
@ai6yr want to borrow my golden retriever? 😬 She has recently been in a war with the bold squirrels eating our berries. She is winning some of the battles, though I warned her that there are more of them than there are of her…
I never understood how it could be interesting. My mother and both her parents were avid gardeners, I couldn't have cared less.
Now I realise it has to do with having your own space in which to garden. It's a privilege. Allotments are so important to those who otherwise have no land around their homes in which to potter and plant.
It's a joy isn't it? Pruning, planting, tending and weeding. Not a chore. A slow, gentle, growing joy.
@sarajw last thing I'll say is to try diatomaceous earth, you can just sprinkle it in a circle around the drip line of the plants and see if that helps, anything with a "soft" body will not want to go over that
No it's definitely slugs, seeing how many there were and having caught several in the act. That damage didn't happen overnight, we were away for 10 days and a lot of it happened then.
