BTW I enjoy your bloging and have a sm ft2 garden myself.

I saw a small portion of a (green living) program on PBS where the person said that soaker hoses used about 3″ under the soil/mulch are extremely affective at keeping snails away – you’re watering below the soil, topsoil remains dry and the snails don’t find it an inviting environment. I personally haven’t tried it, but most of the drippers on our irrigation are also covered by mulch. This also helps with reducing/eliminating water loss (through evaporation) & maximizes the water for the plant.

Maria may have something with the drip irrigation. Plus it’s more water-thrifty, and some plants prefer not to get water on their leaves…drip helps a lot with those.

Hail in April. Good grief.

One thing that’s worked in past gardens here has been to build a little frame (I nailed together scrap slats from old trellises and junk pieces of lumber) and then cover it with that nylon meshy fabric that’s used to make wedding veils. The stuff is very cheap. You can baste lengths of it together–no need to use a sewing machine–and then secure it to the ground with U-shaped “stakes” cut from old wire coat-hangers.

This lets light in and keeps most bugs out–around here, the plague is grasshoppers, followed by moths whose babes are voracious caterpillars. It also keeps out birds and the neighbor’s cat. I imagine slugs would wiggle underneath it, though. It might tear under the onslaught of a heavy hailstorm, but if the hail didn’t last too long and wasn’t too large, it could break the force of the falling ice so that some of the plants would be saved.

I ran soaker hose under my covering, so I didn’t even have to sprinkle the garden. Just turn on the spigot for a few minutes, soak the ground around the rows or mounds, and turn it off. This is an inexpensive and very easy alternative to a drip irrigation system.

I live down here in Houston – basically the jungle – and have had good luck with MiracleGro tomato food (its bright pink; you mix with water) and Sevin Dust (for the bugs). My plants already have 6 or 7 fairly large tomatoes, with more blooms showing up every day (I also planted on Feb. 15) The beer/slug thing is useful…thanks!

I have inherited some fruit trees when we moved last year, and was curious about your “pest traps” for fruit trees? What are you using & have you had success with them before?

Thanks,

Chris

The thing about beer – slugs/snails are attracted to the yeast, that’s what gets them. I have a great month-by-month gardening book (Northern California Gardening by Katherine Grace Endicott, ISBN 0811853128, no connection to it, just have learned a lot from it) that has a recipe to make your own homemade concoction to repel snails, instead of using beer (although, I haven’t tried it, as I don’t have the snail/slug problem).

Also, the copper tape can be expensive to purchase, because copper is not cheap. It does however pay well at the recycle center, so thieves love copper for their recycle value.

Another tip of heard is to water the garden in the evening, then just after sunset go out with your flashlight and pick all the snails/slugs – this should be useful in the spring when the snails are laying all their eggs. Get them before they hatch.

Happy gardening – nothing like garden fresh veggies

fyi: I’ve read that tomatoes get spindly indoors because the wind outside encourages them to stay low and strong. Next year, you might try wiggling the plants every day (sounds silly, I know) or maybe blow a fan on them for a little bit each day to keep them stout.

Here in Colorado, where our motto is “if you don’t like the weather, wait a minute” our rule of thumb for gardening is that it is (finally) safe to plant on Mother’s Day.

That being said, a couple of years ago we waited for Mother’s Day, planted everyone, and got a 6″ snow that night.

You have to laugh or it just isn’t funny.

I’ve been talking to Dave Shonk at Bumblebee farms in Troutdale, he says that growing’s been tough this year.

I hope this will not color your opinion of gardening for food. The most this should do is make all of us appreciate that getting food at a supermarket can be a convenient fallback to a failing crop. Realize, too, that if the cost of gardening is a lot for you this year, it’ll be less next year, and if it’s more than average then your groceries will also be more than average.

Also, have you checked into cost of CSAs? Apparently it’s really cheap.

We finally moved all of our plants from pots to the garden this weekend, which SHOULD keep us out of frost danger, but we’ll see. I’m really excited to taste some of our heirloom varieties we planted this year, and the thought of some of our fresh basil and tomatoes with some mozzarella for some caprese is making my mouth water.

It works wonders in keeping the slugs off of my lettuce and cucumber plants.

Ian