Posts: 2,149
Threads: 90
Joined: Feb 2006
We don't eat uncooked greens from the Big Island . . . period. This means foregoing some delights and paying for mainland romaine lettuce for salads, but so be it. We do grow lots and lots of leafy greens in our garden and eat them steamed. This would include kale, collard greens, chinese mustard, wong bok and bok choi. There's plenty of tasty variety there. As for the nutritional aspect, I think that there is still a good amount of vitamins left after cooking. Not as much as raw, but enough.
Posts: 6,214
Threads: 354
Joined: Feb 2006
CTHAR has safe field techniques for produce, & they caution to minimize any contamination potentials, visually inspecting all produce, not utilizing produce (it seems all) that may have contamination, rinsing all produce & utilizing one of the water sanitation products (listed in this pdf) and always rinsing all produce.
http://www.ctahr.hawaii.edu/oc/freepubs/pdf/FST-39.pdf
Their main point was not utilizing any produce that looked like it may have had vectors....does your neighbors produce look like it has vectors (chomp holes & such), if so, reject eating it. If it looks good, CTHAR recommends RINSING & RUBBING all produce, to make sure no pathogen caring organism is on your produce. (the pdf has more that just the lungworm to worry about....
OH, & just to mess up a good thing, south Florida has had GALS introduced, and last fall there was a lot of coverage & their Dept. of Ag is working on the disease potential for their produce....
On this issue, best management practices & vigilance seem to be the key.... Many times my neighbors offer produce, I will often explain that there is just me to eat the produce, if they still offer, I accept....and what I do with the gift of produce is up to me then.
Posts: 2,979
Threads: 177
Joined: Aug 2006
Alright, so I have found quite a few slugs at the place. I have put slug bait out for them, but that seems to only attract them. Some zombie slugs will die, I guess, but more of these creatures will live to slime again. I thought that my catchment was completely enclosed (concrete). During the recent deluges though, I crawled under the house to trace the sound of running water. There was a small hole where the cable to the water pump (which some will recall is hidden IN the catchment) goes into the catchment. Water was shooting out of the catchment. I wasn't as concerned as I could have been to see water streaming out of a quarter-sized hole in the catchment, shooting over an electrical cable and at me. My failure to panic may be due to the fact that the zombies have already reached me and I just don't know it.
So I am looking into whether this hole, which I never noticed before, is a feature or a bug. That is, it is possible it is a designed-in overflow. I think this unlikely as it was not near the top of the catchment, but closer to the middle. In any case, it would be possible for a slug to get in my catchment, I think, whereas I thought it impossible before.
My water is pretty well filtered: it goes through a sand filter, then through a 20, a 10, a 5 micron filter and than under a UV. For drinking, I put the water in a pitcher with a PUR filter (kind of like a Brita). I change these filters regularly.
Does anyone have any information about whether this slime-protected nematode can survive such a passage? I do not presently add bleach to my catchment water because the hatch is concrete and weighs about 80 lbs and I don't like to get crumbly concrete bits from the hatch into the catchment. I wonder if a cup of bleach in 11,000 gallons of water would be effective anyway.
Posts: 1,098
Threads: 6
Joined: Nov 2010
The slugs are attracted to the bait, but they should wander off and die within a few days. It causes them to stop feeding so if they're still coming in that means you're picking up more slugs from the surrounding area, which is good.
Posts: 468
Threads: 46
Joined: Jan 2009
Regarding copper wire and copper bands, I will reiterate what I stated before, then let it go. A state biologist presented in Puna in 2009 that he tested the efficacy of copper banding in preventing slugs and snails from crossing. He found in his lab that it did NOTHING to retard slugs and snails from crossing. They crossed right over it. There you have it.
( Edit: I just read in the CTAHR report mentioned earlier in this thread that slugs won't "generally" cross a copper band that is 3-4 inches wide.)
As to water catchment, rat lungworm infects humans who consume the nematodes that live inside the slugs/snails. The severity of the infection is partly due to how many nematodes are initially consumed because they do not reproduce inside the human body. A 5 micron filter and then uv should be enough to kill any that get that far. The nematodes don't live long outside the host either so they are not just swimming around in anyone's catchment tank.
(Edit: I just read that the infective stage of the nematode is when they are about 400 microns large. That is about the size of this period. So the filters will catch them. But good luck seeing that on a lettuce leaf.)
Posts: 378
Threads: 7
Joined: Oct 2011
You can add a half cup of bleach monthly to your catchment by dumping it into your gutter. Yes, it does make a difference.
Posts: 2,979
Threads: 177
Joined: Aug 2006
I am so embarrassed that I didn't think of that, jackson. Thank you -- a great idea. hotinhawaii: thanks for your contributions on this subject. You present the evidence in a compelling and convincing way. It is disappointing that there is such a significant impediment to buying and producing local produce.
