| T O P I C R E V I E W |
| CindyG |
Posted - May 23 2013 : 10:11:33 AM
Quite a visual, isn't it? Standing on a slug could be rather difficult if the slug were big enough : )
I am a suburban farmgirl (at heart) with an almost exclusively native-plant garden of which I am rather proud. It was a lot of work removing all that heavy Virginia clay and incorporating something useful in which plants could thrive, but it is so worth it to have all the wildlife visitors and inhabitants - especially butterflies and bees.
The slugs I am not so happy about.
Who lets them be, who gives them a last wild night in a shallow container of beer? Remove them or tolerate them?
For years I just let them have the lower leaves and chalked it up to Mother Nature, but this year it has already gotten out of hand and it is only May!
Here's another fun visual for you as you contemplate your advice to me about doing away with slugs or not:
I feed the crows - I'll admit it. I know people detest them, but they are brilliant characters and very entertaining. So I tried the beer thing and buried a few rinsed tuna cans so the tops were level with the ground, poured in some beer, and almost barfed the next morning at the HUGE collection of bloated, dead slugs in the cans. Because crows eat everything...or so I thought...I dug up the cans, drained out the beer and set them where the crow food usually goes, and waited. Beer poached food would be a treat, right?
Sure enough, here come the morning visitors yelling "wooohooo that pink featherless thing left us food again" which brought even more of them. One by one they looked in the can then I swear looked in the window at me sitting at the kitchen table and then turned their backs. It was hilarious. An apology of dinner scraps the next morning put me back in good stead with them.
So ladies - what do you do about slugs? |
| 16 L A T E S T R E P L I E S (Newest First) |
| lovecatsandsunshine |
Posted - May 30 2013 : 08:24:59 AM
To keep slugs from eating my containers of flowers, I put crushed eggs shells around the flowers. The eggs shells will cut them.
I like crows and ravens. I rescued a crow after a cat got him. He wasn't injured, just in shock. He did fly away after a few hours.
STYX the Band rocks!
Food for thought, no farm no food. |
| RachelLeigh |
Posted - May 27 2013 : 11:23:24 AM
LOL Cindy, if you ever decide to buy a house in Acton, Indiana, check with me first!!!!
Farmgirl Sister #5159
My blogs: http://14thandoak.com & http://thehomefrontkitchen.com
"Faith is one foot on the ground, one foot in the air, and a queasy feeling in the stomach." - Mother M. Angelica
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| CindyG |
Posted - May 27 2013 : 09:48:43 AM
OMGosh I had the heeeeeebiest case of the heebie jeebies reading your story!!! What an experience you had, and I can completely understand your PSSD.
I will never complain about slugs again...unless I buy your old house by mistake. |
| RachelLeigh |
Posted - May 26 2013 : 6:07:32 PM
I saw this post and had to read it. You see, I have PSSD - Post-Slug Stress Disorder. For over four years, we lived in a small house that was built on what was very wet land. Any time it rained in the spring, summer, and fall, I would approach our living room with great trepidation because I KNEW what would be waiting - Commando Slugs. I called them Commandos because they were, like, three inches long and brown with black stripes running down. They'd come in under the door or through small holes in our floor (don't get me started on that old house) and I'd find three or four of them EVERY SINGLE MORNING in my living room. It got to the point where I'd yell "SLUGGGGGGGGGG!!!!" and Hubby would have to come get rid of them while I hid out in a different room. They made my skin crawl. Our place was infested with them. I found one once curled up in a little ball, asleep on the rug beside the couch. WHAT EVEN???? When I went to work early one morning before daylight, there were four climbing up the steps outside and another three on the patio stones. We bought caulk and filled every possible hole in the floor and they were still coming in through the baseboard vents. I was pouring salt lines in front of all doors each night at one point. Those stupid things were the main reason we left that house and moved into a townhouse in an apartment complex - to be slug free!!!!
Farmgirl Sister #5159
My blogs: http://14thandoak.com & http://thehomefrontkitchen.com
"Faith is one foot on the ground, one foot in the air, and a queasy feeling in the stomach." - Mother M. Angelica
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| crittergranny |
Posted - May 26 2013 : 10:32:21 AM
There are no slugs here but when I lived in TX we had them. We lived by a lake for a while and they would come in the house even. So fun to step on one in the middle of the night barefooted...bleck. We used to put lines of salt across all the doorways. They scream when they dry up from salt....creepy. My niece likes to keep them as pets, she's nuts. As for ravens I don't feed them cause they would probably get too numerous. They steal eggs sometimes which can get aggrevating. I do like them though, in small numbers. We used to have one years ago that would spend a lot of time playing with a foal we had at the time. We always have a couple that play with the foals. They pester them till the foal chases them and then they will fly along the ground in front of them and then swoop upward at the last minute right before the foal catches them....sooo cute!
Laura
Horse poor in the boonies.
http://www.etsy.com/shop/CrittergrannysLair
www.creamofthecroptrailrides.webs.com |
| Betty J. |
Posted - May 24 2013 : 11:53:32 AM
I have removed about three butter containers of dead snails from my garden. I don't like putting out poisons, but in this case I put some at the beginning and end of each row. I don't have many slugs, but the snails have been very prolific in the past few years. I would like to do something besides poison, but I don't have the energy.
My garden looks so sad because even my green beans haven't gotten up from seed form yet and it's been almost three weeks. I think I'll have to replant. I must say after replanting my peas that they are doing pretty well.
Betty in Pasco |
| CindyG |
Posted - May 24 2013 : 11:35:35 AM
EllaRow-
Reading about the parasitic wasps was fascinating. I have way too small a yard and all the neighbors blast the heck out of their lawns with lawn service chemicals, so I doubt I could get any established, but that is a good thing to know about for when we move to a bigger property post-retirement.
That's about as natural as a solution could be!
Cindy
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| prariehawk |
Posted - May 23 2013 : 8:58:41 PM
About as far away as I can get!
Cindy
"Vast floods can't quench love, no matter what love did/ Rivers can't drown love, no matter where love's hid"--Sinead O'Connor
"In many ways, you don't just live in the country, it lives inside you"--Ellen Eilers
Visit my blog at http://www.farmerinthebelle.blogspot.com/ |
| EllaRow |
Posted - May 23 2013 : 3:10:34 PM
We had a huge problem with slugs eating our lettuce. My husband has built and hung some parasitic wasp houses around the place (not too many crows around here) and we haven't had many since.
Soaking in wisdom as the showers fall |
| CindyG |
Posted - May 23 2013 : 3:09:17 PM
As a private pilot, I thoroughly enjoy watching them fly. In the spring when a young corvid's fancy turns to love, they do some amazing aerobatics to impress the ladies.
Regarding feeding them, if you have a little time to kill and want some entertainment, put some jello out for them. They love love love sweet stuff, but are very wary of new things. So they sneak up sideways on jello a few times until one is brave enough to touch it. Then when it moves OH MY GOSH jello kills ravens and they actually fly backwards away from it. Until it doesn't kill them and doesn't move and then they come back. This happens a few times, then one is brave enough to eat it and then all hell breaks loose. They try to stuff more in their bills to carry away but that just doesn't work so they have to eat it right there. Ravens with jello on their feet is not the most majestic of sights, but it sure is a cute one.
I don't feel bad about dong this because it seems to be something they genuinely enjoy eating once they figure out it won't kill them, and they are so smart they are only wary of it once.
They get almost all of our leftovers,much our neighbors' dismay. One neighbor griped about finding what looked like pork chop bones when he cleaned his gutters. They looked like pork chop bones because they WERE pork chop bones bwaa haa haa. This guy hates everything about nature but bought a house in a wooded area, and I'm pretty sure the crows know it so they deposit their pork chop bones accordingly. |
| oldbittyhen |
Posted - May 23 2013 : 2:37:42 PM
Cindy, I only have the pair here, they are very teritorial and no other ravens are allowed, and if some try, its war, with feathers flying, its like watching a airplane dogfight in the air, and they are not happy with hawks, eagles and vultures either, and will chase them out too...always entertaining to watch them use tools to open things, crack bones etc...then if you give them an egg, they will poke a hole in the small end, tip it up in their beak and dump the contents down their throats...
"Knowlege is knowing that a tomato is a fruit, Wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad" |
| levisgrammy |
Posted - May 23 2013 : 2:07:32 PM
Just kidding. Actually, I am going to try the tip with the flour. I'd sure like to find something to keep them away.
farm girl sister#43
http://www.ladybugsandlilacs.blogspot.com/
O, a trouble's a ton or a trouble's an ounce,
Or a trouble is what you make it!
And it isn't the fact that you're hurt that counts,
But only--how did you take it?
--Edmund C. Vance.
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| levisgrammy |
Posted - May 23 2013 : 2:06:16 PM
Right on top of them if possible!
farm girl sister#43
http://www.ladybugsandlilacs.blogspot.com/
O, a trouble's a ton or a trouble's an ounce,
Or a trouble is what you make it!
And it isn't the fact that you're hurt that counts,
But only--how did you take it?
--Edmund C. Vance.
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| CindyG |
Posted - May 23 2013 : 2:01:23 PM
I am PICKLE GREEN with envy! Ravens are incredible, and I would give my eye teeth to be able to interact with them on a daily basis.
For those of you who believe in reincarnation, I must have been one in a previous life. I believe this for two reasons: first because I am as much of an S.O.B. as they are, and second because we can chat. I had a lot of people give me a pretty wide berth after making a few apparently correct sounds at the ravens at The Tower of London only to have the ravens come running over (their wings are clipped, if you are familiar with that story) and answer! We "chatted" for quite a while. My husband spent the afternoon worrying if I had made a pact with Dr. Dolittle or worse.
Nini-thanks for the tip about flour. I'd love to deter the slugs without injuring anything else with chemicals. |
| oldbittyhen |
Posted - May 23 2013 : 12:35:32 PM
LOL, I have a pair of Ravens that have lived and nested on my property for 30 plus years now, we named them Fred and Wilma...they actualy will come a flying when we yell their names to see what goodies we have put out for them, when they have babies , we put out some extras and when the babies are just learning to fly, they will bring them over to my little fence around the little front yard, (we put up little fence when my 1st baby was born so he had a place, some what contained to play, until he learned to climb), can always tell when mom or dad is comeing in with food, cause they will raise a din like you've never heard,lol...if not for the ravens, you would not be able to drive down the roads for the road kill, so their service is very much wanted...before my husband passed, the male would walk over to him, look straight up at him and in raven talk, tell him that he was hungry, and could he spare a meal, lol...love my ravens...
as far as slugs go, don't have them here, to hot and dry in the summer, and to cold in the winter...
"Knowlege is knowing that a tomato is a fruit, Wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad" |
| Ninibini |
Posted - May 23 2013 : 11:13:13 AM
Cindy - try sprinkling flour around the base of your plants. It sticks to their skin and suffocates them. I've used it for two years now, and swear by it!
Love the story! I get along really well with our birds, too. My husband called me "Snow White" the other day as he wondered at them all just fluttering down around me to perch up on the fence in a line to watch me. LOL!
(By the way - when I read your title, I thought, "Wherever they will go squish under my feet!" LOL!)
Good luck -
Nini
Farmgirl Sister #1974
God gave us two hands... one to help ourselves, and one to help others!
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