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Hey hooligal:
If you don't have any pets make your garden Buffo Toad friendly. put a few broken pots around for them to hide under during the day. They LOVE to chow down on slugs. I found a whopper out in my garden last night and it made me happy to see him. Mr Toad is very welcome at my place..
Andrew
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Erin...cinder does NOT deter slugs. But - we have copper wire around a few things and that works great!
Carrie Rojo
"The sun and moon collide. Isn't gravity a funny thing? The universe explodes apart. All the children sing..." Todd Rundgren
Carrie Rojo
"Even the smallest person can change the course of the future..." Galadriel LOTR
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Copper is the very best. Take 12 or 14 gauge scrap wire, strip insulation, loop around plant, twist ends together. reuseable year after year. Deters snails as well. I suspect the dielectric action is what deters them, never measure the potential though.[  ]
dick wilson
dick wilson
"Nothing is idiot proof,because idiots are so ingenious!"
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Hooligal, The marigolds should do great. I scattered seed last fall and they keep self-sowing so when the plants get raggedy-looking i add them to the compost pile and the seedlings grow to take their place - all on their own :-)
As for cinder, I can attest it does nothing to slow down slugs. And the lava rock seems to create favorite hidey-holes for them. :-( But the copper wire ring around the plant stalk seems to work, as Carrie & Dick both suggested. So does slug bait.
aloha, Liz
"The best things in life aren't things."
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Little meters out there testing the potential of dielectric action between slug slime and copper? Sounds like something you could write a grant to study and then we could all be growing slugs for your research. You could move over here and invest in slugs for research. Eeewe!
The County has some sort of composting program where you pay $10 for the two hour class and they give you a compost bin as part of the $10 fee. Seems like a great idea to me! Our garden group is going to go the next time we figure out where the composting class is.
There are at least two types of worms around here. There are the big ones which are deeper in the dirt and then the little small red extra wiggly ones and those are the official "compost" worms for worm bins. At least according to the worm lady, Piper, at the 10,000 Gardens event they had in old Hilo town awhile back. They had worm bins of at least two stackable plastic tote sized boxes. The lowest bin had a spigot on the side down near the bottom and the upper bins had holes in the bottom. Piper had one bin freshly prepared by filling it up with shredded papers and then nesting some kitchen garbage in different areas of it. That gets watered and then compost (the smaller red worms) are added. The lower bin had been composting for awhile and it was already black dirt. She said once the worm bin gets going, you put the new bin on top and then wait awhile until the worms have moved up into it then empty the worm castings out of the lower bin refill it with shredded paper and kitchen garbage and then put it on top again. Some bins have three bins in different stages of decomposition. I think the purpose of the worm bins is to make worm castings and even though there is composting happening that isn't the main theme.
"I like yard sales," he said. "All true survivalists like yard sales."
Kurt Wilson
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I have not done it yet but I am told that washed and crumbled egg shells tear hec outta snails and slugs and that spread around the perimeter of a garden and maybe around individual plants, it keeps them snail and slug free. Friend who brought me the egg shells swears by it.... if you try it let me know. I keep selling all my eggs and don't have enough shells to try it yet....
I want to be the kind of woman that, when my feet
hit the floor each morning, the devil says
"Oh Crap, She's up!"
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Well, one learns much more from failures than successes. Actually, I've got to say it's been a 50% success, which, all in all, isn't too bad for the first hack at farming the tropics.
Composting is the least of my concerns. I can compost nicely on the kitchen counter. Mostly I'm trying not to compost.
I think at this point the key to my site and elevation will be to pay very serious attention to soil drainage. The biggest problem is the flip flop between too much rain and then too much sun. Since the lot here wasn't leveled or cleared in any fashion, I've still a lot of topography and relief of 10 or so feet, and I plan to more or less terrace garden the high spots and plant muck loving taro in the low ones. So far it seems to be coming along nicely. It will involve a lot of work with structure, of retaining walls of various sorts, but I believe the rewards will be well worth it.
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FITZ, very used tires are great for building raised beds & retaining walls on the quick. BUT you have to be OK with having used tires in your yard. I'm told that old tires have already had enough heat cycles to prevent off-gassing of toxins. There's always the threat of a nasty mess if you have a fire on your lot
I switched to raised tire beds 6 years ago & consistently see larger, healthier yield. My water consumption also went down because the lower lip of the tires store a bit of water. So you water less & it forces the roots to go deep in search of the deeper water source. win win.
Another upshot is that the tires are free & very easy to build with. You can stack & terrace with ease and get height quickly. On hillsides, peg them in place with rebar. My last tire bed was in the lowest spot of my yard...the first run of tires got me 8" off the ground pronto & kept the garden high & dry when a 6" deep pond developed in the dead of winter! Here, I'd throw 6" of cinder or lava rocks in the bottom tire to ensure good drainage.
I built a small 3-tire-high bed down at Kapohocat's when I lived there. It looked pretty redneck until I realized that I could 'lean' lava rock against the tires instead of tediously locking lava rock in place on its own. After 45 minutes of stacking it miraculously looked like a lava rock bed instead of a tire pile! We used the tires as compost bins for a few weeks, then threw on a bit of soil after stuff decomposed. They've got choke basil in there now.
The only downside I've found (besides them being tires) is removing them. Say you move & don't want to leave 'industrial waste' for the new owner. It's a pain in the rump to get the dirt out & cut through the root systems that develop. The two times I've removed my tire gardens it has rained - some sort of crappy gardener rain dance I guess! Tires full of mud & roots is no fun.
Sorry if i'm telling ya stuff you already know, but it's one of the best gardening tips I've received in 18 years of gardening [  ]
* I'd rather fail at happiness than succeed at misery *
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Sorry, just a little subtle humor. . .you'll find out. Meaning, I'm trying not to compost my wallet, my clothing, whatever foodstuffs I have, my mattress, my feet, etc. . .
The garden has no trouble composting either! Whatever you till in will be gone in a week and a half.
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On bugs and cucumbers, has anyone tried to grow cukes on trellis and putting knee high nylon stockings, or remnants of nylon stockings over them to keep the bugs out? I have heard this is done to protect squash and cantaloupe.
mella l
"Resolve to be tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving, and tolerant with the weak and wrong....because sometime in your life you will have been all of these."
mella l
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