Well, today has been a bit of a crazy day. I had a thoroughly unpleasant day at work with my IBS playing up - I'm back on my medication after making the optimistic mistake of coming off them, but things haven't quite settled down yet. At the moment I seem to be experiencing hunger and fullness as nausea, which is pretty irritating. Especially when it's hunger - the last thing you want to do when you're feeling queasy is eat.
Anyway, I came home a bit early, and was met with a pleasant surprise - a package! I'm actually expecting a couple of packages, since I do a fair bit of online shopping, but this one was completely out of the blue.
I think I must have won this in one of those "25 words or less" competitions - there was no note included but it was sent from a publishing company. I don't normally enter those competitions because I have no idea what kind of entry they're looking for. Maybe I should just go for it more often! :) Hopefully this book will come in handy when we're designing our new house.
So, that was enough to stop me feeling too sorry for myself, which is what I usually do when I'm feeling ill. The weather's pretty cold and wet so I hadn't planned on doing anything useful in the garden - I have to tread a fine line between taking it easy and getting stuff done with my health in its current state. I figured I should just check on the new vegies though - and good thing I did!
Vegie bed #1 was crawling with slaters - not a surprise - but unfortunately I could see the little blighters chewing on the stems and leaves of my precious little plants. Now I know there are different viewpoints on slaters - some people have heaps of 'em in the yard, but they never cause a problem as they stick to eating dead stuff (mulch etc). Others have plagues which quickly ringbark vulnerable seedlings.
Until today I had been in that first category, and even though I knew the bed was crawling with slaters before planting, I wasn't worried at all since I figured they had plenty of yummy lupin mulch to eat. Fail!
So, I've rushed out and set up a beer trap - I used to have this in the herb patch for catching snails, but the snails steadfastly refused to go near the beer.
Just in case my slaters are also teetotal, I thought I might try the scrunched up newspaper approach - only my "no junk mail" sign on the letterbox has been so successful, that I haven't got a scrap of newspaper in the house! Instead, I collected up a whole bunch of toilet rolls (these usually go into the worm farm), smeared vegemite inside them, and squished them up to form a cosy slater house.
My other plan is just to pick out slaters and deposit them into the beer trap whenever I'm out there. It's a bit unpleasant watching their legs kicking around in the froth though :(
So, any other suggestions?! Maybe a garlic/chilli spray? Please comment with your ideas :)
Now, to those of you (Hi VG! :)) who are about to say "get ducks! get chooks!" - it is an excellent idea, but currently Mr Bon & I don't have the time or the energy to expand our menagerie. Ducks are second on the list when the time comes though - after ratties.
2 comments:
I'd say the slaters are going all out for the time being, and the numbers will settle down especially as your garden gets stronger...I put cut-down toilet rolls around my transplants as I don't know what eats them, but it stops them...can't say this will work for slaters...don't you have insectivore birds hanging around? (to feed the slaters to...)
Hi Dorothy,
I hope they'll settled down!
I'm afraid I've used up all my loo rolls now, but I might try the shield approach next time.
Unfortunately we don't get as many birds in the garden as I'd like - I suspect the dog chases them off. There are a couple of mudlarks who are here for part of each year, maybe they'll spend more time with us once they discover the raised bed is full of slaters.
We get a lot of small honeyeaters, but I suspect that slaters would be a bit too large for them.
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