Day 40 – Garden Wildlife and Carrots and when Cucumbers Go Bad

Wear gloves and shift the compost materials by hand before using a pitch fork, please!

More rain, more slugs, more salamanders!  We have these orange salamanders that show up in the tall grass and in the marshy areas, and sometimes on the road (I pick them up with wet hands and transport them across if I find them).  The kids love them.  They’re extremely gentle with them and let them go where it’s damp and there are no cars going by.  The slugs – they’re another story.  Ducks are an option I can’t work with, since the garden is not fenced in, and the dog would be wanting to do the “fetch and shake” that he was wired to do.  Sluggo is an option I’ve used before, but I am trying the old tried and true methods of scoop and drown when they’re in the garden, as well as an interesting one (since I had a cucumber that was going bad):  cucumber slices on an aluminum pie plate is supposed to drive them away due to a smell we cannot smell.  Is it true?  We’ll find out.  Wish we could harvest them and ship them someplace where they eat them.

The carrots are starting to sprout! two beds were planted with about a 1’x3′ area on each, next week the second batch will be planted, and so on, every two weeks ’til I run out of room.

Thirty minutes were spent yesterday and today chopping down some of the comfrey so they wouldn’t shade out the strawberries (about 10 minutes, including running over the stalks with the lawn mower and setting them in the compost bin where the garter snake had taken up residence), weeding (10 minutes each day, mostly around the periphery), setting up a “strawberry pyramid” (a post to follow), and adding a drip line to the hugelkultur bed ’til the plants get established (I’ll leave it there all season, just won’t use it unless it’s necessary).