Thread 6 - TalkExiles: "Yup, still round."

[Kucinghitam]

Continuation of previous threads (thread 5).

Gather here all ye refugees from the JTT Flat Earth Society, welcome to the reassuringly oblate spheroid of MN! Ye all already know the answers to the questions "How the heck do I format my post?" "Why can't I edit my typos?" "What do those acronyms mean?" and most importantly, "Where is everybody that I used to know?"

So really we're all here just to chat randomly.

I've used nematodes, and I am pretty sure they had a definite impact (let my delphiniums get up, anyway!) But they don't get snails at all.

I mostly just cart the beasties up to the compost heap for the slow worms to munch, though. Also, I don't bother with things like delphiniums!

I doubt the soil is warm enough yet, though, and the 'todes don't have a long shelf (or rather, fridge) life. Where did you get them from?

Tricyrtis2022 · Today 18:33

I had horrific hayfever from the age of 7. Then I started going to sea and the following year, hardly got it at all. The worst thing now is my eyes going red and sore.

Also, I think I saw the 'todes mostly impact small slugs, once they are full size, they can cope with the parasites.

My bulb planting was zapped by my leg breaking activity. In the end I shovelled them into pots in January. Some tulips have emerged, the rest are MIA so far.

In the mean time, learned beekeeping persons on Facebook are pooh-poohing my blackthorn diagnosis and saying probably cherry plum.

I had no idea such a thing existed, but I think they are right.

I didn’t get round to planting any new bulbs last year but the tête-à-tête mini daffs from the year before are lovely (although the window box of them on my wonky steps has the odd gap as a result of squirrel action, as does a bowl of mini tulips). Time will tell with the rest of the bulbs. Next to open will be the Rip Van Winkle mini daffs, I think. If last year is anything to go by, they’ll mainly be cut and brought indoors as the stems are too delicate to hold the heads up.

I planted some bulbs in pots very late, but they seem to be on their way. Lots of things coming up that have been in the ground for years - tete a tete, Rip Van Winkle, something smallish with yellow outer petals and a long orange trumpet, little wild daffodils with pale outer petals, Hyacinths planted out after a first year in pots are doing fine in the grass. The earliest things, snowdrops, cyclamen, crocuses, aconites, almost finished. Snowflakes looking good, the first snakeshead fritillary is out, no sign of the rest of them yet.

There are hellebores, the primulas are starting including wild primroses, and bright blue pulmonaias, and the surprise gift from last year, sweet violets all over the place, purple and white. The ants must have planted them in the hot weather.

There were crocuses in my lawn a werk or two ago but they’re finished now. There are a few (ones I actually planted) in flower beds. The iris reticulata are over but the anemone blanda are getting going. I’ve also spotted a few hyacinths tucked away in less visible sites than they deserve. Mostly though it’s all about the leaves of flowers that are yet to arrive (tulips, bluebells, grape hyacinths, done if the later daffodils).

Most excitingly, I have 2 Crown Imperials up. 5/6 came up last year, so pleased to have any this. I put little plastic cones filled with dry dead leaves over them, to keep them a bit safe for the next day or do.

They are evil, but boiling water? I hope I'm never reincarnated as a slug in your garden.

Still, as Dinsdale Piranha said, "cruel but fair". :)

A colleague once told me she cuts slugs’ heads off with sharp secateurs and I thought it was the cruellest thing I’d ever heard, but although it is a repulsive activity, it’s so much quicker and kinder than any of the usual anti-slug remedies, and it’s what I do now. There are always a million more slugs to take their place, it’s not like they’re at risk of extinction.

I concur - I don't see why it's more cruel to cut them in half or execute them with boiling water, than to leech them slowly with parasitic nematodes or explode them with toxic slug pellets. The latter measures simply give one the plausible deniability of not being directly connected to one's actions.

We do nematodes, but if I find any while I'm gardening, I guillotine them with secateurs.

Well, angelico, I also hope you're not reincarnated as a slug ... have you done anything to warrant that? But it's a very quick murder.

I always thought I'd rather like to be reincarnated as one of those very big black slugs you meet in ancient woodland and in upland areas. They live in such beautiful places, very few things eat them, and there are no nasty murderous gardeners in the places they inhabit. If they're like other slugs there's no trans stuff either, they're naturally hermaphrodite.

Guillotining allows you to discriminate, and spare the carnivorous slugs who will eat the troublesome sort for you. I can't bring myself to don't though, and just hurl them into the hedge instead. And it would be a full time job to make a dent in the local population. Wildlife[excluding slugs]-friendly pellets are deployed sparingly inside the greenhouse, and everywhere else things just have to fend for themselves with a bit of a boost from a calcium spray. Nematodes worked well in Norfolk, but the slugs here are tougher and don't seem bothered. Vine weevil nematodes, on the other hand, are enormously effective.

The crocuses and snowdrops in our lawn have finished, but the ones in the pots are in full bloom. Whereas the tete-a-tete daffodils have done the opposite, in full bloom in pots and only just starting in the lawn.

Lawn violets are an ambition of mine, but I can't get them to establish. The primroses and primulas are doing nicely though, just coming through now alongside the muscari and squills around the fruit trees.

There have been violets in my lawn the last couple of years. I haven’t been out to take a look up there yet this year though and they’re too small to see from the house.

There is usually a patch of cyclamen that is really beautiful but invisible unless you’re actually standing in the bed it’s in as it’s found a cosy patch behind a bush.

My brain hurts. The results of the latest NHS pension rejig have been announced, and are - as usual - as clear as mud.

I think there's 1 bit of good news for me, 90% I can ignore, and 1 little throwaway sentence giving the possiblity to reverse a choice from 15 years ago that means I'll need to add 2 pages to my calculations spreadsheet (possibly including a formula containing a set of numbers they've not announced yet - need to go back and read that bit again).

Ah, no - on a second read that's a 1-dimentional, not 2-dimentional calculation, and no new numbers required for formulae. So I can plug it straight into the spreadsheet with the info I already have.

Hello, new thread. I should be in bed but I'm watching what I hope is the last episode of season three of You which has mostly been shit but I've had to get through it because season four looks like it might be good in Americans stereotype the UK hilariously but don't be so smug about it British person because we do the same to them.

My sister has become an orchid freak and dotes madly on them. I've called her Crazy Orchid Lady.

I'm sure there are slugs in America but in the 20 years I've been here I haven't come across them. In the garden of my previous house here I had a lot of hostas, which in my UK garden were slug magnets, and I never saw one.

Woke up to a carpet of white this morning! I had rather pooh poohed the idea that it would actually snow as suggested as quite far south.

We have a carpet of white, covering everything, but it's all hailstones and not snow, as I had assumed, when I looked out of the window.

Just looked out of the window -snow on the car but not a lot of it. We'd call it a dusting in Maine.

Grey and chilly but no frost here.