Saturday morning before sunrise I loaded up the pickup with the bean trellises to take them to the farm. Since we are not doing a garden at home this year, we decided to take them where we are growing a garden and put them to use there.
IAfter setting them up, preparatory to planting beans on Monday (soil temps are finally >60!) I took the opportunity to look over the starts we put in two weeks ago (bok choy, brassicas and cucurbits).
The devastation!
The carnage!
The inhumanity!
Apparently in the last week the slug populations have exploded, and our plant population has dwindled. At this point it looks like we are going to have to do an almost complete re-plant of everything except the peas.
The peas don’t seem to be affected, and this is probably because we have lost several rounds of pea plants to slugs in previous years, so this year, as soon as they sprouted I pored a few cups of sluggo around them from one end of the row to the other.
Little horned devils!
The other plants were not so fortunate. Lesson learned. Next year we are going to set up slug traps (beer traps, most likely) and sluggo from the word go. If we can find a way to incorporate ducks once we get them, we might do that too, although they might actually try to eat the sprouts as well so that will take some careful planning.
So later in the day, Mommy went and bought two bottles of sluggo while Daddy was at work, and we sprinkled about half a bottle in the evening. Take that, slugs!
Little Farm in the Big City 