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Gardener's diary...
Bugs, slugs & turning nettles into wine
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by Jules Harrell
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I thought I had it all
figured out last summer, and blogged about how successful we were
eradicating slugs and bugs. Something like this: The slugs are gone!
After using white vinegar and water to squirt the little buggers as
they ate, rather than picking them up (eugh!), sprinkling diatomaceous
earth around the plants on top of the soil as to not disturb the
earthworms below, a healthy application of Escar Go, from Gardens Alive
dot com, and finally, a complete demulching of the whole garden (since
it's so wet here we don't really need it), I checked on the lovely
gardens because it rained for the past 12 hours.
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No
slugs, not even one.
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Me
thinks I'm going back out there just to sit and stare in awe at the
beauty of no more slugs in my gardens. (Of course they replicated and
came back.) Cohorts from Honest Weight read my happy farming blogs and
occasionally commented. My wonderful friend, Dennis Phayre, former
owner of what was the best vegetarian restaurant in the Capital Region,
Shades of Green, emailed me in response to my site and said:
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"So
you like torturing hungry little bugs?"
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I
decided to share my feelings about garden-eating bugs with all of you
spiritual seekers out there who believe that bugs should live long fat
happy lives. I too am a fan of bugs and, by the way, almost completely
vegan. I too love the Earth and all its wonders. Here's the saga of me
and the slugs, which started out oh so Perelandra.
I don't like torturing bugs, I told my friends. I kindly asked them to
leave on multiple occasions. Then I picked them off carefully one by
one into the hundreds. I have photos of kitty litter boxes full of
slugs to prove it. Then finally one day I decided that it would be best
for their spiritual evolution for them to fast, so I applied Slugaway,
which is completely nontoxic to humans and pets, and it makes slugs
stop eating. The slugs fasted, they evolved, and they have reincarnated
as butterflies, last I heard.
The road to figuring out how to deal with slugs and bugs has been a
long hard slog through organic land with many errors along the way,
including the voracious Japanese beetles. I put out traps fairly far
from the garden, and I walked around with Dawn dishwashing detergent
diluted in a spray bottle, and sprayed them while they ate. A few fell
off here and there, stunned by the blue spray. Between the traps and
Dawn, I planned to hopefully salvage 98% of the garden. Also, the wild
and beautiful mullein plants tried to help me by sacrificing themselves
to the beetles, who love mullein. While those beetles swarmed the
mullein, I spray them with Dawn is what I told my friends. Then... bad
news struck.
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RED
ALERT!!!
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Either
Dawn is totally poisonous or I just made the mixture too strong,
because it totally hurt my plants. Yikes! Don't use Dawn. It's BAD for
Plants. Sorry plants! Yes, I killed many plants with Dawn. And the
beetles marched on, eating and replicating, much like Mr. Smith in the
Matrix.
Well, I thought, at least they are mostly eating the nettles I so
thoughtfully transplanted from a farmer's field into two of my beds. We
happily ate simmered nettles in the spring (tastes like mild spinach)
and during the summer I saw how they sort of kept the beetles at bay.
Until this spring when I noticed that eek! The nettles had morphed into
monsters and spread to many other beds, and so frantically I started
the Nettles Eradication Program. How to metaphorically turn nettles
into wine?
I carefully and microscopically dug the nettles from the garden beds,
and replanted them in a fenced off over-grazed llama pasture, where
they are happily sprouting anew. The llamas will soon have a nettles
feast and I have again warded off another garden disaster, or shall we
say, misadventure.
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