The Modern "Victory Garden"

It's that time of year again; the slugs are out in force and hungry for the tender young plants that are emerging in the garden beds. Living as we do in the maritime Pacific Northwest and in a house that is in a small clearing surrounded by dense forest - means that slugs are my number one garden pests. Through years of experience I have found several tried and true methods for slug management - and proven several other often-recommended solutions as essentially worthless. I thought it might be worth while to share with you some of what I have learned on this subject.          

First off, let me just say that without a doubt the most effective method of slug management is to do an early morning garden inspection and just pluck them off and either drop them into a small bucket of soapy water OR fling them far into the dark woods.   If this is done about twice a week spring through fall - the populations are kept more manageable.  It does require getting up quite early a couple of days each week. In addition, it requires that you invest enough time to give a careful inspection of your plants - making sure you find the ones hidden inside the folds of leaves etc.    

The second most effective method is the use of copper collars. I have found they work really well overall but unfortunately they are not a complete solution. First, they are only practical to use on larger items like cucumbers, broccoli, etc.  Second, if a leaf is drooping down over the edge of the copper collar to the ground, slugs will use the leaf as a bridge and climb aboard the plant. Despite these limitations, I have had stellar success with copper collars and have accumulated quite a few of them.   What is particularly nice about this slug management tool is that they are permanent and completely reusable. They only require a clean up with either some metal polish or some steel wool to remove the build up of tarnish that a season of use puts on them. Here's a picture of my 2009 broccoli planting with the collars in place

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Of course, those are not possible to use on smaller items or large block plantings like my pea patch or bean patch - so here are some other methods I employ along with the hand picking:

• Copper tape wrapped around the perimeter of an entire raised boxed bed - sold with adhesive backing on them this works well but the tape is so thin that this only lasts for a few years before peeling away. I have this on one of my long vertical grow beds and it has made a HUGE difference. That bed has very little slug activity in it.   
• Diamateceous Earth ("DE") sprinkled around the outer perimeter of a growing bed area. If you remove the slugs carefully prior to putting the outer band down of DE - you don't have to dust the plants themselves. I use this stuff with great caution because if you accidentally inhale some of the dust you can really damage your lungs. Works fairly well if you don't get lots of rain for a spell and if you apply it with great care.
• I no longer use any natural mulch around plants. A thin layer of compost is okay, but I have found it is best just to wait until fall to lay down a heavy carpet of compost on the beds or just work it into planting holes when transplanting. But the reality of gardening in the rainy Pacific Northwest is that you are much better off to never layer on mulch around plants because it is a home for slugs. Deep mulching (ala lasagna gardening) is a disaster if you live in slug territory.
• Keep walkways mowed down and weeds whacked near beds - they are a home for slugs.
• Place a wood plank or board in the bed where it will not interfere with your plantings. In the afternoon, turn it over and remove all the slugs that have retreated to the cool damp underside for the day. Dispatch them in the same manner as you do for the hand picking "walk about".
• I keep an old pair of salad tongs near the garden area because they are the perfect tool for grabbing and flinging slugs with! Don't worry the salad tongs stay in the garden and are not the ones we use for meal serving!  It really does work though because the longer handles give greater throwing distance when flinging them AND I don't have to touch the larger slimy ones with my bare hands. Sadly, this does not work with the baby-sized slugs and there is nothing for it but to grab them with your fingers. Ewww... not fun but necessary.

These are all methods I regularly employ and I have found them to be effective in varying degrees.  However, what I have found to be a complete waste of time was the often-recommended beer trap solution.   My experience was that it was a lot of fussing around - cleaning them out to remove the rotten slug bodies bloated in moldering old beer and buying cheap beer or mixing yeast and sugar solutions to refill the containers sunk partially into the soil - all just to capture a scant few of the varmints. I would not recommend it at all.                     

That's my experience in the land of the slug - maritime Pacific Northwest.

After much delay, the raspberry, strawberry, and cranberry plants have all finally been put into their respective beds in the garden.   The weather forecast Thursday night was calling for windy rainy conditions for the next four or five days beginning late on Friday night.   With this in mind, I raced home from work on Friday evening, threw on my "working in the garden" clothes, and dashed out to plant the bare root raspberries and strawberries that had arrived on Monday and been sitting ever since due to unusually bitter cold conditions.   The weather had warmed up considerably on Thursday and Friday (not warm, but not frigid either) and it was dry and mostly sunny - so this was my brief window of opportunity to get this important task completed before the heavy rains arrived.     

The first thing I attended to were the raspberries.   There are 10 "Heritage" bare root plants that are going into an area that we just finished clearing last Sunday.   I dug 5 deep holes in a line approximately 2 feet apart and then dug another five holes in a line that was offset 2 feet from the first line of holes - staggering the holes so that they alternated with the first line.    In the bottom of each hole a ½ cup of general purpose organic fertilizer (5-5-5) was mixed with compost and the soil at the bottom.   The bare root plant was then placed carefully in the hole and a mixture of compost, native soil, and some potting soil mix was used to refill the hole around the root system.   The soil was pressed to firm it up and then the plants were watered thoroughly.   Bare root nursery stock is always discouraging at first because they look essentially dead and it often take quite a while to come out of dormancy and begin growing.   As a consequence they are not much to look at now - but here are my raspberry plant "sticks".  

Once the raspberries were safely in place, I focused my attention on the bare root strawberry plants.   I ordered 50 "Ozark Beauty" plants which is the same variety I currently have.   I ordered these because I am adding a second (larger) bed of strawberries to the garden this year.   The new bed is 4'x8' and the existing bed is 3'x8'.   The new bed had been previously prepped and was basically ready to go.   I broadcasted some general purpose organic fertilizer over the soil surface and then used a hoe to cultivate it into the top few inches.   A rake was then used to smooth the bed out.   The strawberries were placed into the soil using a hand spade and I was extra careful to ensure the crown of the plant was just above the soil line.   If strawberries are planted too deeply the crowns tend to rot.   The plants are spaced 1 per square foot in the new bed such that there are 32 plants in the 4'x8' bed.   I used most of the remaining plants to fill in some gaps in the existing bed.   I had started cuttings from an old bed last summer and used them to plant up the 3'x8' bed but not all of them took hold so there were some places that needed filling in.    

The last chore to be completed before it got too dark, was to plant the cranberry plants.   These are potted plants so they were fast to put in.  These 8 cranberry plants went into a 2'x8' bed that used to have strawberries in it.   The soil had been previously heavily amended with leaf based compost and rock minerals (rock phosphate and greensand) and so it was in great shape as a new perennial planting bed.    Before planting out the cranberries, I sprinkled some garden sulfur (to acidify the soil) and general purpose organic fertilizer over the bed and worked it in and then raked everything smooth.    The plants were popped in - spaced approximately a foot apart in a slightly offset/alternating pattern and then were watered in well.   Here's a picture of one of the cranberry plants.  It's a little hard to see because they are a burgundy color which does not contrast much with the dark soil underneath it.   

Right now the plants are basically just small "twigs" but they grow into a low mat and create a nice ground cover effect.  I have several other cranberries growing in front of the shop underneath some blueberry bushes.  I think these new plants will produce better though because the soil conditions are much better in the garden beds than in front of the shop.   

The berry planting was finished just as it was getting too dark to work.   Put all the tools away and called it an evening.   I am hoping to get some more  plantings done this weekend in between the rainstorms.   I have onions, broccoli, cabbages, and kohlrabi that have been growing and hardening off in the unheated greenhouse which really need to get into the ground soon.   I also wanted to get the big pea patch going this weekend as well.   Not sure how much of all of those tasks I will be able to get accomplished (the weather will dictate that to a large degree) but I am hopeful that at least some of it will get done.