Re: Gardening 2001 - now sq foot ?'s

Mark,

Thanks for taking the time to explain the tomato strings.   I think I follow
your explanation..  Slugs - well, all's I know is that they like damp
organic matter and in the veggie garden - they drive me nuts.  I have been
reluctant to put out bait (toxic) but I did find one this past year from
Garden's Alive that is supposed to be non-toxic.  I will probably give it a
try around my tomatoes.


Mark wrote:

> Slugs were BRUTAL this past year; we had a lot of rain during the
> summer. Suprisingly, they never bothered my tomatoes. They were really
> ruining my lettuce, chard, celery, etc. & my strawberry plants. I gave
> up on lettuce because there were too many holes, or I would find them
> inside the heads; same with celery, in-between the stalks. I actually
> went out about 4 nights a week with a heavy wire used for making row
> hoops and skewered a bunch of them, one night I had enough for a
> slug-kebob. Also, with the humidity and rain, I had problems with my
> pumpkins, and the slugs even were on them. Then I tried some salt, some
> diatomaceous earth, etc, but they either shriveled or took off trying to
> get out of it. I bought some traps over the winter that I will try this
> year, but I may just try mulching the surface with sand--the tomato bed
> has a sand path on the north side and no slugs were to be seen near the
> sand. Many were under bricks, etc but I found that they were anywhere
> close to grass, I even got a bunch in the early evening going thru the
> grass, which I stepped on & ground in. I did actually find one climbing
> up a trellised cuke plant, about 18" up, which I plucked & ground into
> the grass.
>
> Besides the lettuce & celery, the strawberries got me really mad--I only
> had about 12 plants in a tub made from a plastic 55 gal drum (the bright
> blue one in some of the pics) and I hated turning a berry over to pick
> to find out half was missing! That is when I bought some commercial
> bagged stuff for ants & slugs, but it was pretty late in the season
> already.
>
> The humidity here rarely gets below 50 or 60 percent, usually in the
> seventies-eighties or more. I'm about 6 miles from Lake Erie.
> Summertimes temps are usually in the 80's and sometimes low 90's; there
> is usually some breeze from the W-SW direction, the wind is rarely
> completely calm. The lows are usually in the 60's but also some high
> 50's.
>
> The tomato string, I tie a string down the row from end pole to end
> pole, then run strings up to the overhead pipe (I use 3/4" EMT Conduit,
> it was cheaper than 1/2" black or galvanized pipe.) By the time I run
> the strings, the plants are already about 18" so I start near the stem
> and actually wrap it very 4-6" or so (maybe 2-3 wraps on an 18" plant.)
> As the plant grows, I just go out every couple days and wrap 1 turn
> around the tip or wait for the  plant to grow about 4-6 more inches
> before I wrap. It is really hard to explain how it's done, it kinda
> comes naturally, sometimes you are actually wrapping the plant around
> the string to take up slack in the string. Also, you should be able to
> undo the string at the top, and leave some extra--the plant will need
> more string as it grows, otherwise the string will be too tight.
>
> The snowstorm I really don't remember the date, it was either October or
> November, maybe 11/21(it was before Thanksgiving) when we got 25" (the
> white barrel had a blue lid and you can kind of measure upward from
> there.) We have been only getting a few inches at a time lately. The
> snow in the pic is finally gone, and a week ago we had 3-5 one day &
> 3-5" the next; that was all gone by a couple days ago...there was
> actually a couple inches yesterday morning & it to is now gone.

--
Debby Williams
Author of Fruit and Urban Kitchen Gardening e-zines at:
http://wz.com/homegarden/GardensPlants.html
Regional Advisor at http://www.thevegetablepatch.com/
Oakland County, Michigan USA;USDA Hardiness Zones 5b/6a
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