Death Came Organically

No, this is not my collection of ABC gum and yard clippings.

It is, rather, a snack-bag-o'-death. (Though the contents are not intended to be snacked upon.)


(I wonder what they're talking about in there.)

What, you may ask, is the meaning of this? Well...

...a couple of weeks ago, Jeff prepared a garden plot in the backyard. He dug up a 15' x 3' section of lawn against the wall:


He then puppy-proofed it by pounding some U-posts into the ground and rolling out some heavy duty chicken wire.

I planted some vegetable plants and...voila! What do we have? That's right!


...a five star buffet for slugs!

*Boo! Hiss!*

Look at what the wee beasties did to my bell pepper plant:


(Those holes aren't supposed to be there, in case you were wondering.)

They swiss-cheesed my basil. Grrrr...

Though it's hard to tell in this picture, the most victimized annual is my cucumber plant:


Poor baby. One leaf is nothing but veins.

How do slugs DO that? I mean, I'm sure there aren't any teeth in those slimy mouths of theirs. In fact, do they even have mouths? Hmmm... *carefully examines for anything remotely like an oral cavity*

Nope, and yet their destructive capabilities are on par with our electric hedge clippers.

As strange as it sounds, I've always had a weird sense of respect for gastropod mollusks. I mean they're basically the pariahs of the garden due to their lack of defined shape, their ooey-gooey coating and their lethargic meanderings. The coolest thing about them are those little dealy-bobs on their heads (heads?) that curiously extend and retract. Yet, in spite of their hideously grotesque existence, they carry on with life, never stopping to complain, resolutely searching for sustenance to make their survival certain. That's all true of snails and slugs. However, slugs not only share the above disadvantages with snails, but they have the additional deprivation of being homeless. There's something admirable about that, right? Right?

*crickets*

Anyway, my tendency to esteem such creatures ends abruptly when it comes to them eating things from my garden or my family enjoying its harvest.

So, I called the local nursery to ask for advice. "Linda" immediately told me about some powder they sell that I can sprinkle on my precious veggie-bearers.

"Actually," I responded, "I was hoping to keep my garden organic. Do you have any other suggestions?"

"Oh." Her voice fell flat. I could just imagine her eyes rolling. "Well, we usually tell organic gardeners to plant three times as many plants as they think they'll need since pests will destroy about 2/3s of what they grow."

Hmmm, not good news.

Now let me explain something: I'm not super committed to the whole organic thing. I've been eating non-organic stuff for decades and I haven't noticed dire consequences from doing so. However, I like the idea of not putting chemicals on my plants or in my dirt, so I'd like to at least try...

What's a know-nothing gardener to do? Why turn to the internet, of course, where gardening "knowledge" abounds.

I won't bore you with all of the "sure-fire" ways to kill organically (that phrase is rather ironic, isn't it?), but one of them involved cornmeal (which you saw in an above photo alongside the decimated cuke bush).

Last night, I took a flashlight outside to see how well the cornmeal was killing off the marauding scavengers. Well, I didn't see any cornmeal-bloated-carcasses, but I did see plenty of living creepy-crawly burglars inching their way (uh, millimetering their way?) around the garden plot.

I had a ziplock with me, so I started playing "Alien Abduction" by scooping them up with a plastic cup and dropping them into the bag. After a quick zip to secure them inside their plastic coffin, I dropped it into the trashcan.

Although, maybe next time I'll put the ziplock into Tobias's lunch sack. That could be fun. :)