Thread 17 - TalkLair: "Okay, first of all, what's with the outfit? Live in the now, okay? You look like DeBarge."

[RasaSayangEh]

(Previous thread 16).

Spring is springing, daffodils blooming all over our LairGarden, which have not all been picked by a neighbour's kid...

In the TalkLair, the hearth is glowing, books by non-approved authors line the shelves, cosy rugs are down on the floors looking a bit stained by cat hairball regurgitation. The denizens of the lair are a welcoming bunch though, always eager for general chit-chat on all manner of topics. We just won’t mention the gnawed bones of our prey over there in the corner of the cave…

It was slug central here too - and not just slugs, but ghastly fat Espanish Eslugs - until I got a compost bin for green food waste. Now they all live there, where it is warm and nutrient-rich, and keep out of the garden!

@SqueakyDinosaur We have monstrous slugs here that gobble up almost every ornamental plant I try to cultivate. I have a great hankering for delphiniums, which I gather are absolute slug magnets. But peonies, clematis, verbena, Japanese anemones and nepeta are all thriving in my cottagey-looking front garden. A foxglove self-seeded in the garden several years ago and I was delighted, but to my disappointment it didn't come back and there have been no baby foxgloves either - I keep saying I'll go and buy some but haven't done it.

I can also tell you about the plants that are taking over the garden right now 👀and that I spend a disproportionate amount of time chopping down/digging up, which are clearly slug kryptonite.

Osteospermum - already here when we moved in, nice flowers and good ground cover, but very keen on spreading over their neighbours.
Crocosmia - already here when we moved in, need constant taming or they also spread like mad.
Perennial geraniums - already here when we moved in, absolute bloody menaces, sprouting out of every gap between paving slabs and any scrap of root left behind has immortal powers of regeneration.
Alchemilla mollis - I planted two. Now there are 93756349, also sprouting out of every gap. Do not plant Alchemilla mollis.
Astrantia (a white one) - BiL gave us one plant. Now we have 5874683, also sprouting out of every gap.
Centaurea - BiL again, and see above. The goldfinches love the seedheads though.

Come to think of it, the nepeta are rather thuggish too, but they haven't seeded all over the paving so they're easier to discipline with occasional digging up and chopping in half.

Your garden sounds lovely @RasaSayangEh

Very kind @Britinme - it looks wildly overgrown at the moment, hardly any paving visible including the drive. I've been busy at work and it is currently too hot (even for me) to contemplate heavy digging and pulling up plants.

The heatwave has meant a bumper crop of strawberries - we've been feasting almost daily - and our cherries are ripening! Yesterday evening I was using a 'feather' duster on an extendable pole to pull the cherry tree branches within reach, neighbours were on their way out and saw me, brief confusion as they thought I was dusting my garden

@SqueakyDinosaur - it's tricky as there do seem to breeds of Super Slug that will eat anything. We had them in a previous garden in Lincolnshire and I resorted to hurling them as far as I could into the woods over the road. They'd even eat plants with bristly stems.

Saying that, there are some things that helped in that garden. Leave off the soft perennials and go for woody shrubs. Lavender is always a good one to try. Keep plants as healthy and vigorous as you can because slugs will go for any plant that shows the slightest weakness. Give them something else to eat - put out some nice soft peelings or lettuce and hope they eat that instead. Collect them after dark and take them somewhere else. Encourage wildlife that will eat them. Beer traps can be gross but help.

@Vegemiteandhoneyontoast Collect them after dark and take them somewhere else.

That made me laugh because my first thought was "That's clever! Then they won't know where they are and won't be able to find their way back." I wondered where all the vile mega-slugs (aka Espanish Eslugs) had gone, as we used to be inundated with them. Then one day I opened the compost bin and it was heaving with the fat bastards. Still, at least they get a healthy diet.

moto748e · Yesterday 15:36

Interesting piece on sleeping habits:

Thanks, that was fascinating; I don't think I've come across that before. I usually sleep through, sometimes I'm awake at 5 and get up for a pee, then feel wide awake and stay up.

I pick slugs up in kitchen roll and put them in the outside bin, I like to think that there's a subterranean population of them in the landfill, helping to break the waste down!

Your self-seeding garden chaos sounds like my ideal, Rasa, though I do concede the hard to manageness of it! I'm impressed Mochi lets you have so much nepeta. I can't grow it at all here, due to the fact it gets rolled on relentlessly by the furry fools, who kill it off.

We're going to need a new thread soon.

We don't really have an issue with slugs here which is a huge relief after what happened at the last garden.

I let things self sow too. Oriental and Welsh poppies, foxgloves, evening primrose, chives and Verbena bonariensis are the most successful. The little daisy Erigeron karvinskianus arrived two years ago and I'm happy for that to spread between the slabs. We've also brought home seeds on the tyres of the car that have sprouted in the gravel and it's interesting to see what comes up. Primroses, Mimulus guttatus, a fern and a Heuchera. There are annoyances too but those get removed.

I'll start a new thread later today or maybe tomorrow.

Your garden must be very fertile, as I find alchemilla mollis spreads only very gently so it’s containable. I do use a few slug pellets on things like seedling, and sprouting, Dahlias but once they’ve grown for a bit, I find the slugs ignore them. We were at Wisley last weekend and they have a trial of delphiniums going on - stunning- I know I could never grow them thanks to the slugs.

Perennial sweet peas also seem to be slug resistant.

And alstroemerias. Or we may just have so many the slugs can't keep up. They self seed all over one border and we have to pull them out by the handful so they don't smother the roses.

When I had a slug-ridden garden I used to use empty cat food cans filled with beer as a trap - worked quite well but yucky to empty.

We're on clay and Alchemilla mollis spreads like a weed. I have to be careful to cut off the faded flower stems before they go to seed or it's everywhere.

Love Alstroemeria cultivars but the species plant is a real nuisance for spreading. It does seem to be pretty slug resistant.

Bizarrely we've only ever had slugs in the (east-facing) back garden. Perhaps the trek along the path to the front is not worth the effort?

We have some strong yellow alstromeria in dry shade. It’s not my favourite plant but it flowers where practically nothing else does. I’ve seen the same variety in a neighbouring garden where it’s about twice the height as it’s in sun and presumably gets enough rain. I suspect it’s a bit invasive there.

Maybe the west facing bits of garden get hotter, so not as nice for slugs?

The will power of these dogs!

x.com/AMAZlNGNATURE/status/1936424274798973227

Those faces they're pulling!

New thread for when this one fills up:

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/_chat/5359885-thread-18-talklair-thats-no-moon-its-a-space-station

Dear me! My Lab would have either had it in a flash, or sulked on her bed.

Thanks for the ne Fred!

Minor (petty) AIBU:

I am supervising an MSc student for several weeks. I usually arrive in the office basically at the crack of dawn, whilst the student arrives at a more typical 9:30-10am. My desk is sort of around the corner from the office entrance, so I can't see who has arrived. The short-term visitor desks are by said office entrance. I therefore explained all this to the student, instructing her to pop her head around the corner when she gets in; we then have to go to the lab together to get on with her practical experiments.

So, a couple of weeks on, guess what the student never ever does (despite gentle reminders)? If I don't keep getting up from my desk to peer around the corner every time I hear a noise, I reckon she'd just arrive and sit down at her desk until nightfall.

AIBU to find this irritating and perplexing?

Is this part of the Gen Z "thing" I keep reading about, in which they try to avoid basic human interactions (remember my bus-stop "kidnapping" story from a few threads back)? I always thought I was the least sociable and most avoidant person I knew - until recent years!

YANBU.