I know its been a bit dull lately. Who wants to read about growing your own, let alone get out and muddy up your gardening gloves when it is this wet and grey but we have to thank our lucky stars we are as far south as this. My twitter-sphere tells me the chums up North are having a much harder time of it than us and may have actually forgotten what sunlight looks like. Down here there is a new addition to the town sounds that of the gazebo pole rattle. It seems that anyone planning any kind of party, BBQ or family gathering has now taken to the gazebo safety routine. This means adding a canopy that covers a minimum 75% of your garden in case Aunty Vi should get drizzled on.
So what kind of urban farming is happening amidst all this overcast gloom?
The highlight of the day cannot possibly be watering the greenhouses..Oh no there is a much more athletic and rewarding activity to be had. Slug slaughter. Yes, forget Grand Theft Auto on the digi device and get out in the garden with a trowel, shovel or the ultimate grab is a pair of secateurs. These blighters have tried to have it away with half the leaves on our runner bean plants so there is no compassion for them. The rainy season has meant they have laid more eggs than ever before and every morning we step out of the house to find trails of evidence across every surface and food bowl in every coop. This is to say nothing of the mess they can make of a veggie bed overnight. Now the slug defence method is two fold. Firstly it squishes it's body up making the outer skin thick and hard to penetrate when attacked, and secondly it secretes a mass of slug goo (technical term) which it covers itself with making it nigh on impossible to get hold of the little beast or to scoop it up on a spade.
So slug slaughter begins with those found in the open combat ground of the lawns...the shovel slams down and cuts them neatly in two, no matter how squished up they have made themselves. Leave the bits for the birds to hoover up later. Then there are those in the veggie beds, stealth approach is needed here by slipping one arm of the secateurs under the soil beneath the giant gastropod mollusc and just as it senses an attack and starts to squish and goo all at once...snip it is history. This time scoop the bits and flick onto the grass for the birds as before. The really horrible critters are the ones still munching on chicken food or crawling around the inside of their water feeder. They will goo up as you cast a shadow over them and try to evade capture by sliding behind any container. For these either flick them out of the coop with a trowel or as has become my habit feed the chooks wearing one rubber glove and grab the squishy squirmy gooey hideous lump of glob and throw it down on the grass for the shovel chop of delight.
I am fully aware of how emotive this blog post is and it reflects completely my passion for getting rid of this most useless and unproductive of creatures that crawls our planet offering no solution to the reduction of greenhouse gases and no positive contribution to the food chain in terms of nutrients. Don't start shouting at me about them eating dead leaves and the like to help biodegrade matter. Mr and Mrs Earthworm do a very nice job of that and they don't touch our beans and cabbages in the process, yet Sadistic Sidney Slug eats earthworms too.
So to conclude, the rainy season has kept us from the exciting tending of our veggies, it has called a halt to the plucking out of side shoots on tomato plants, given they have hardly grown in a month but it has not failed in providing a new sport in Olympic year which can be played by all good gardeners and allotment owners. Post your Slug Slaughter high scores here under comments if you too are losing the will to grow your own in the climate that is widely reported to be impacted by global warming...wouldn't that be nice...warmth.!
I think I may now need to visit the therapist and will return to blogging as soon as I find one who can help.!
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