Slugzzzzzzz

Who would have guessed? The arid landscape of southwest Colorado has a slimy little secret: slugs! To be more precise, Derocerus reticulatum or gray garden slugs infest our yard and garden.

According to this article (http://www.nysipm.cornell.edu/factsheets/fieldcrops/gg_slug.pdf), gray garden slugs emigrated from Europe like everyone else in the 1800s. Did you know that slugs have keels and breathing pores? Or that they're hermaphroditic, switching from one sex to the other or can be both at the same time? They live from 9 to 13 months and can lay hundreds of eggs. Okay, my skin is starting to crawl now....

Earlier in the summer, when our vegetable crop--especially the beans--began to grow, we noticed that large holes kept appearing in the leaves--but with no obvious culprits in sight. Eventually, we discovered that it was slugs--slugs that oozed out to dine in the evening when the watering system came on and then went back to their little mollusc dens in the morning. I looked up slug control advice online and came up with BEER. Of course, there was no way I was going to spend money on good beer for slugs to drown themselves in, so there were some enjoyable moments in the cooler aisles of grocery stores looking for the absolute cheapest beer. A 12-pack of Milwaukee's Best--available in 3.2, even cheaper!--was the end purchase. Chuck thinks so poorly of Milwaukee's Best (apologies to any MB lovers out there!) that he questioned even drowning slugs in it, but I refused to spend money on better beer. We had fun filling little aluminum foil pans with beer and sinking them to slug level in the garden and actually got a lot of "volunteers" each night--though QUITE disgusting when time came to dump the pans out. But the biggest satisfaction came from another online tip: using chopsticks to pick them up. We even went out after dark with headlamps on and had drowned or tossed dozens within a few minutes.

Now, we're probably coming across as a blood-, er slime-thirsty lot, but we're actually quite laissez faire when it comes to yard and garden. We have a sort of "live and let live" approach, which usually means that in the garden, the pests may get a little, but we get more. We're the type with a "catch and release" program for spiders in the house (though with a toddler about, I'm finding I'm not quite the compassionate softie I thought I was). In general, we don't subscribe to "better living through modern chemicals"--as Chuck puts it so well--outside or inside. But there are times when we feel we must resort to chemical warfare. The first was when ants had taken over our garden area a couple of summers ago. We had to kick 'em back with boric acid bait. And now, we're trying slug bait. The beer/chopstick method actually had a very good effect in the garden, but I recently discovered to my intense disgust that our front yard--the very grass--was literally crawling with slugs at night. No more barefoot night time wanderings for me!

Although the box of Corry's Slug and Snail Death has very eye-catching cover art (not to mention a very straight-to-the-point name), it is incredibly toxic, especially for dogs (says so on the box). And we do love our border collie, Sine, so we opted for the more natural, iron-based bait--Sluggo! Its container also has colorful artwork featuring a happy dog and cat and a little sequence showing the demise of a snail. What is up with these graphics? Maybe I should give up my day job and do a coffeetable book on Slug Bait Art....

Anyhow, I put some out last weekend, but it apparently takes a week for this bait to do its job--the slugs have to eat it, lose their appetite, crawl back to their lairs, and starve to death--so we're still in the waiting period. But just to make sure, I shook out some more pellets today. I'll keep you posted.

P.S. Though some things--like habenero chiles--aren't growing too well, we are pretty pleased with our garden this year. The leaf lettuce is done, but we're picking yellow cherry tomatoes and yellow zucchini right now. The anaheim chiles are getting big, the purple podded pole beans are close to harvesting, and we'll have carrots and tomatillos come autumn.