What have you done in the garden today? Part 5

[MereDintofPandiculation]

What have you done in the garden today? What went well? What surprises have you had? What could have gone better?

Pruned the broom in the rain this morning, potted up my tomatoes in the greenhouse with some cheap tagetes from the supermarket.

If it stops raining I'll sort out the trug for salad leaves.

It's quite chilly this evening but I braved the cold to deadhead everything and remove the snails who were throwing a party in my lupin pot.

Slugs/snails are now moving onto my courgettes . Luckily I kept some back in pots. I’m going to go and get some strulch tomorrow to see if that helps. Newly sown beans are sprouting indoors!

If it stops raining and the sun comes out will the slugs stop or is this summer veg doomed?

My mum goes out with a kitchen knife each night and chops them up which I used to think was barmy but I’m starting to understand!!

Oh and the slugs have eaten all my new bearded iris which I am sad about as I was looking forward to them. I might try again next year in the front which is much drier. And I might not get them until the weather has warmed up so they can start off well.

I'm a bearded iris fanatic and mine have been mullered by snails this year because of that wet winter 😭 I'm gardening on dry sandy soil so this has been a shocker!

@Turkeyhen yes my soil is sandy too. I’ve never had bearded iris before , not the best year to start!

@Countrylife2002 they will be happy in the driest possible position, July/August is a good time to move them when they're dormant. My problem was made worse by having alliums growing up through the irises - all the allium foliage was a great hangout for snails 🥴 Going to dig out the alliums and add sacks of grit to my iris beds.

Someone told me to don a head lamp and take some scissors and I've tried everything else except killing them and I'm getting no where with it.

I get a pit in my stomach when I think about killing them for simply trying to munch on my rather delicious lettuces. Then I go to eat my lettuces and there are none and I think just you wait till I get you, and then that feeling subsides and I feel guilty again about it.

I must do nematodes wrong because I spend a fortune on them every year and they don't do what I expect them to.

I'm sorry about everyone's slug and snail problems, it really is so disheartening when we all put so much into growing and nurturing, especially with such challenging growing conditions. I've protected the dahlia with lots of leaf mulch, coffee grounds, tea leaves that I save in a compost bin and spread around the plants, plus egg shells, chopped up twigs from the birches that shed lots of branches when it windy. They also hate lavender so I've planted a few of those along the border as well.

weather was exactly as forecast, although there were a few useful breaks in the rain around lunchtime and teatime. I potted up half of the sweet pea and will do the rest today. Plus tomatoes and chilli today.

Even I've relented and put slug pellets down last night.

I planted my onions and within 2 hours the slugs were on them.,

It has to be bad for me to reach for any chemicals, even if they are organic.

I lob snails and slugs over the back fence into the woods but it could easily be a full time job here, I’ve never seen so many.
We seem to have an influx of leopard slugs 🤢, even the smallest ones are voracious and they’re eating plants like monarda that have never been attacked before. wtf can’t they go for the weeds instead?
I have resorted to blue pellets put under pieces of slate slightly raised at one end in an effort to keep some plants safe. I have tried just about everything else from copper tape to sheep’s wool, egg shells to coffee grounds and fine grit to cat litter!

I asked my neighbour who's retired and is a very dedicated gardener. She said she does a snail hunt every night and then lobs them over the fence across the way from us. So I'm following her lead. But I suspect that for every snail I remove, there are millions more waiting to take its place.

I'm sure I read somewhere that snails have some sort of homing instinct so if you chuck them over a nearby fence (or anywhere reasonably close to your house) they'll just come back.

I've stopped short of driving any rogue snails 3 miles down the road to release them elsewhere so for now I just lob them into my dalek compost bin and let them get to work in there. I totally agree with you by the way @ThursdayTomorrow about home-made compost. It's like magic and still astounds me that scraps of vegetables and old newspapers can become lovely compost with just a bit of time. I actually prefer my stuff to the compost in bags which has been really variable recently. I mix it half and half with shop bought compost and add some sharp sand when planting up pots and it seems to do the trick.

I've got an old tool box/stool thing tucked under the seat of the arbour which houses several leopard slugs. Apparently they've got a very good homing instinct and as they're supposed to be mainly detritivores and carnivores (Wikipedia says they can 'pursue other slugs at a top speed of 15 centimetres (6 in) per minute') I let them be.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limax_maximus

I've been removing slugs and snails daily for well over a month. It really helps, but it's soul destroying when the lupins still look mauled and this years delphiniums, well I don't think they will flower 😢

They are also eating stuff that they never eat, I have resorted to bramble canes from the blackberries (which thankfully I have a massive area of) I've pegged the canes to the top of some of the raised beds. It seems to be working on the carrot bed, so today's job will be to protect the potatoes.

Chucking them over the fence, doesn't work for snails..I squash random ones I find, but my daily hunt, which I get hundreds, I relocate them a fair distance away.

I’m sure strulch helped me last year and it has the added benefit of stopping the cats using my garden as a toilet. I shall get some today and report back later in the week!

I'm sure I read somewhere that snails have some sort of homing instinct so if you chuck them over a nearby fence (or anywhere reasonably close to your house) they'll just come back. The BBC had a “citizen’s science” project about 10 years ago, where a lady painted tippex on to snail shells before escorting the snails varying distances away. The critical distance, if I remember correctly, was 150 yards. (I may have grossly underestimated)

I have probably misunderstood then but I thought leopard slugs ate other slugs so they were to be encouraged into the garden.

I can safely say though that I've no experience of leopard slugs I just seem to get your usual lettuce eating variety so you're more of an expert on this than I.

@Jimmyneutronsforehead that may well be so! I’m definitely no expert.
All I know is that the slimy sods are wolfing down everything from cosmos to zinnias here 🤬I wouldn’t mind so much if they confined their menu to the other varieties of slug here 😊
A 1cm one ate off a half tray of Nemesia seedlings last night 🤬, I caught it this morning.

I've got some baby gem lettuces that have survived in one of those raised salad planters but I am going away for 4 days so I have decided that I would leave the cover off so they can be watered by the rain but given my garden is looking patchy enough as it is it's not entirely a risk I am happy with.

On the other hand this is the first year my carrots have germinated (yay), they're only parisian carrots so hoping they don't take too long to grow.

I ordered another packet of erigeron profusion seeds because I only got about 10% germination so when I'm back on Sunday I'm going to try a different germination method and hopefully they'll be enough to fill the gaps in the beds.

My lettuce is ok in a raised planter. Something is nibbling and making tiny holes, but it’s not slugs. They’ve decimated my beans and courgettes. I’ve just planted a couple more courgette plants out and made a little hillock of strulch so we shall see. I’ve also put tomatoes out in half grow bags and next job today is to surround them with strulch as well.

I put slugs I see in the black bin (which is at the back). No idea if they escape but I’m def not at the cutting in half stage yet !

my lettuces have survived under the cold frame so far, but I’ve put the beans in the ground this afternoon and am v nervous. We don’t seem to have too many slugs (probably thanks to the frogs) but I pick SO many snails off the bedding plants each evening.

I planted a thyme 2 days ago. Today it’s vanished. Found the bottom part of it covered with gravel, the taller bits chomped off. I don’t think it’s slugs. I blame the cats.