We gardeners are a hardy lot. Hardy and optimistic! The weather of the last few weeks has managed to take what might have been some of our nicest gardens ever and reduce them to muddy, shredded leaves and broken stems. As if that weren’t enough, we had worms by the millions, which later turned into moths. And to add to the festivities, the slugs decided to arrive and flourish.
It was a trade-off, I think: we had a kinder winter, which may have given us a head start on our gardens but did little to get rid of our garden pests. They had me fooled: up until just a few weeks ago, the hostas were beautiful and blemish-free. Then I noticed a few little holes, nothing much, which I attributed to the fluttering cabbage butterflies. But all of a sudden, the hostas were absolutely inundated with damage, with not one plant left unaffected. It had to be slugs — where were they up until then? A mystery!
What to do? One day while Keith was mowing the lawn, he moved the birdbath and found the slug clubhouse: hundreds of them were there under the base of the birdbath, having a slug mixer and no doubt talking about the great salad buffet that was only a couple feet away.
A moment with the garden hoe and a plastic bag disposed of them quickly, and we hoped that we had got rid of the majority of them. But there must have been more elsewhere. If possible, it seemed that the slug damage in the next couple days was even worse.
Slug bait is available in garden centres, but we are reluctant to use this because of the danger to other garden wildlife. We tried putting a couple flat boards among the hostas, thinking that perhaps the slugs would congregate under them there each morning. No luck.
Some homework taught me that the best solution might be diotomaceous earth. This is a powder that is made of fossilized microbes on the floors of the ocean and lake and rivers. DE comes from diatoms, a five dollar word that describes single-celled algae that are made of silicon dioxide. If we looked at it under a microscope, it would look like slivers of glass, and as the slugs (or cabbage root maggots or cutworms or even ants) crawl across the powder, it does a very effective job of pest removal by destroying the pests’ outer layer and their internal moisture, causing them to dehydrate. It is not harmful to birds or pets.
We use DE by spreading the powder on the soil around the affected plants. The only bad thing about it is that it works only when it is dry, so we have to be prepared to re-apply the product after a rain.
Nothing will save our hostas for this year, but there is always next year! As gardeners, we always look to next year!
The first meeting of the Yorkton and District Horticultural Society will be on Wednesday, September 21 at SIGN on North Street. We are in for a treat with our special guest speakers, Frank Woloschuk and Glen Tymiak, who will be telling us about “How to store dahlias, glads, calla/canna lilies, geraniums and more” for the winter. You don’t have to be a member to attend, but if you would like to join the group, new members are always welcome!
The great garden designer Gertrude Jekyll said “The love of gardening is a seed once sown that never dies.” In spite of the challenges of gardening this year, let’s continue to look forward to the fun of “next year” in our gardens, and all the beauty and satisfaction they bring!
Have a great week!
