Re: Slugs and snails

Tim Dutton wrote:
> 
> Strange that you do not have the Aussie frog in Wainui. They were obviously
> resident in our garden in Upper Hutt (Heretaunga), as we would sometimes
> hear a lot of noise, like a cat fight, and on investigating would find one
> of our cats confronting a frog on the lawn. This was always at night. We
> had installed a pond in the garden, so this may have helped to draw the
> frogs in.
> 
> Here in Kaitoke we get a great many frogs. Of course we do have a larger
> pond, but they always lived in the garden before that was dug, and I have
> also found them in the drainage ditches in the paddocks. Dozens of them use
> the pond for mating and egg laying early in the summer and we then have
> many thousand tadpoles in the pond. The ducks, herons, cormorants and
> kingfishers seem to eat a lot of them. The cats here confront the frogs
> from time to time as well, with the same noisy effect. I hadn't though
> about it before, but perhaps that is why we see so few slugs. The frogs
> breed in all the ponds around here, including those in the Regional Council
> forestry blocks.
> 
 Tim
I think the key to your frog population is the large number of ponds and
drainage ditches in your neighbourhood. The only sizable water around
here is the river a couple of hundred metres away across the valley and
this doesn't give much of the still water they would need for breeding.

I am sure it IS the frogs which keep down the molluscs, lucky you.

Well, we seem now to have left the threat of drought behind now. All in
all, I feel the lower end of the N Island has had about the best summer
in the country - fairly adequate rain, plenty of sun and almost no
excesses of water, wind or dry weather. (Don't broadcast it or we might
have the hoards descending on us!!)

I am sure your Oenotheras must look lovely. When I worked at the Cenacle
convent in Lower Hutt (Now the hospice) we had them come up
spontaneously in cracks in the asphalt of the parking area and they were
so striking I have always admired them, but don't really want to find
them in my own garden as they are built on too large a scale to fit in
here.

Was interested to hear of your and Bob's two serindipetous findings on
seed raising. It's surprising what will work. Something similar - I once
brought home a whole lot of hydrangea prunings from the garden of an old
friend and included them in a winter mulch on an empty part of the
vegetable garden. By spring I had a whole lot of little hydrangea
plants. Each pruning had put out roots from its cut end and then turned
its other end through ninety degrees all ready to shoot away. Since them
I have always put out such prunings to go through the shredder or we
would be totally overwhelmed by them. Ironically, when I have
deliberately set out to grow cuttings by setting them conventionally
upright I have never had such a good take.

The garden was noticeably autumnal this morning. The sun was shining
brightly, but was unable to take the edge off the wind.

Cheers
Moira
-- 
Tony & Moira Ryan <theryans@xtra.co.nz>
Wainuiomata, 
New Zealand (astride the "Ring of Fire" in the SW Pacific).
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