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the_siobhanI HAVE PLANTS! And they aren't dead yet!
Well, not all of them. I managed to kill off the four biggest of my tomato plants by giving them sunburn. Who the hell knew that plants could get sunburn? It certainly never frikkin' occurred to me, until all the leaves turned white and crispy and then fell off.
But I managed not to kill the other ones off yet. And after spending two days clearing weeds and flowers out of the bed, my back is killing me and I have a half-dozen tomatos and some basil and pepper plants comfortably ensconsed in the back yard. And every day I go out and glare protectively at them and cover the leaves in soap solution and today I'm going to buy some epsom salts to pour around the stalks in a valient attempt to keep the damn slugs off of them. Apparently slugs love basil. Another thing I didn't know.
While I was outside today I also picked up some more snails. Note that this was just what I spotted in passing, without doing any actual hunting around.
I now have about 30 of them. It has been yet another educational experience. I had NO IDEA anything that small could produce so much poo.
Well, not all of them. I managed to kill off the four biggest of my tomato plants by giving them sunburn. Who the hell knew that plants could get sunburn? It certainly never frikkin' occurred to me, until all the leaves turned white and crispy and then fell off.
But I managed not to kill the other ones off yet. And after spending two days clearing weeds and flowers out of the bed, my back is killing me and I have a half-dozen tomatos and some basil and pepper plants comfortably ensconsed in the back yard. And every day I go out and glare protectively at them and cover the leaves in soap solution and today I'm going to buy some epsom salts to pour around the stalks in a valient attempt to keep the damn slugs off of them. Apparently slugs love basil. Another thing I didn't know.
While I was outside today I also picked up some more snails. Note that this was just what I spotted in passing, without doing any actual hunting around.
I now have about 30 of them. It has been yet another educational experience. I had NO IDEA anything that small could produce so much poo.
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(no subject)
Date: 2008-06-14 03:00 pm (UTC)another thing to try in the slug war is beer. i've heard that if you put a short-walled container of beer by the plants, slugs will be attracted to it, get drunk in it, and drown. or something like that.
ew. but effective.
i know, i know, what's more important, beer or basil, but hey - this way, you can have both, for only a small beery sacrifice. ;)
good luck with the plants! i've been known to kill cacti by underwatering them, so i admit, i'm a little jealous of your plant-growing abilities. ^^
(no subject)
Date: 2008-06-14 03:51 pm (UTC)My typical snail defense was to pick them up and "teach them to fly", IOW hurl them into the street. Any that survived and could make it back into the yard were free to try again if I caught them on another day.