The Slug Wars

I've planted all sorts of vegetables this year. I've been so excited watching my little seedlings start to grow. Each morning and night I'm out there watering and examining each little plant with great hopes and expectations. Hope is a pretty cool thing isn't it? We hope about all sorts of things. We hope we'll win the lottery, we hope dinner will turn out well and I hope that my tomato plants will survive and thrive.

My hopes are starting to wane as my tomato and broccoli leaves have holes in them. Lately I've been coming outside in the morning and I see these little slime trails all over the place, mostly leading to my veggie planters. Slugs. I'm told these are slug trails. My first introduction to slugs was many years ago when on the show Survivor the contestants were eating them. How absolutely disgusting. What the hell was I to do about slugs? They come at night and are gone by morning.

I tried these slug pellets. I came out each morning with great hope that the slug trails would be gone. Instead I see slug trails going around the pellets. Smart little buggers. They were on to me. Then my friend told me about this age old trick of filling a tuna can with beer, leaving it out, the snails crawl in, get drunk and can't stagger out. Cool I thought. But where am I to get a tuna can? I don't eat canned tuna. I tried the terra cotta planter bases. That didn't work, they are porous. The beer just soaked into the base. Don't tell Dena this, but I tried some Tupperware ops. Too shallow, they apparently crawled out before drowning in their drunken stupors. Finally my friend brought me one empty tuna can. I filled it and went to bed with hope. That morning I awoke early to check the can. Wow! Slug trails leading directly to the can and a couple drunk, dead slugs. YAY! It works. I wish I had more cans. Any of you that live locally, please save your tuna cans for the wars.

I also tried some of this English slug killer powder. That works really well, too. The morning check revealed slug trails through the powder and then death. The carnage in the backyard can be gruesome on some mornings but the battle continues. I'm not sure who is winning but I'm pretty sure it's not me.