This morning I went out to the garden to set some new beer traps and jars of cornmeal for the slugs. They have been devouring our peanut plants, strawberries and corn plants for the past couple of weeks and it’s time to bring this to an end. Otherwise the only thing that will survive are the strawberry plants with no fruit at all…and big, fat, happy slugs of course.
While I was out there I was struck with the urge to do some weeding. What I expected to be a quick trip into the backyard turned into about two hours of tugging, pulling, hacking weeds and occasionally slicing a few big slugs that I uncovered. The corn plants were getting to the point that you could barely see them in their little plot and the yard in general was just starting to get out of control. We hid it a bit in the recent video but I actually pulled up about 200 liters worth of weeds according to the huge bio bags I was using. I actually don’t have any before and after pictures. I apparently don’t have any photos of it looking really terrible out there with all the beds in place. I did take some after photos but you can’t really grasp the work involved…so instead I will just give you a few other photos I took this morning
Here is our corn. We’re down to 5 plants now. One of the sweet corn plants was devoured by the slugs. The rest have been holding out pretty well but they have holes all over them. I’m just hoping that we can get a reign on the slugs again so they don’t manage to kill them off completely. Sweet corn is on the right, the jumbo corn on the left
Here are a few of the raspberries on our bushes. We almost tore these plants out but decided to just let them be for a while since we don’t have any plans for that space right now. Amazingly enough the berries are very sweet and tasty so we will probably hold on to the plants that remain. In the past homegrown raspberries that I’ve tasted have not really been that good so I was very surprised when I tried ours yesterday. Even last year the fruit from these bushes wasn’t so good…but maybe this will be a good year for them or perhaps they just reflect the love we’ve already put into the yard. 😉
Here are some of the strawberries which have not yet been eaten by slugs. I found one of them munching away on a berry today and he was quickly ejected from this world. We may not have the biggest or best strawberries in town but considering we were walking on these plants and had them out of the ground for several weeks, during which many of them died, it’s a wonder we have any plants at all. In fact we have found a few more hiding out around the garden which have fruit on them and will eventually move them into the raised bed also. These are some of the heartiest plants I’ve ever seen.
And here’s the larger of the two lavender bushes we have. They are really flourishing now. The one I transplanted actually didn’t survive but I think we still have more than enough at this moment.
