Gladiolas, Delphiniums and (Ugh) Slugs

Gladiolas, Delphiniums and Slugs

Usually my garden looks its best in July and by August many of my perennials have finished blooming. This year is no exception, but the beautiful glads that have started blooming are sure a welcome addition! I bought 10 healthy fat bulbs at the Echo Glen Greenhouse booth at the Trade Show in town in April. I have found in the past that some of the glad bulbs that I planted did little more than grow tall nice looking leaves so I thought some of these might do the same. With that in mind I planted 5 of the tallest sprouts in my round Stack stone bed and the other 5 I planted in the centre of some of my deck pots instead of using a Spike. The ones on the deck have produced double  stems of flowers and the 2 bulbs in my tub at the bottom of the stairs have grown gigantic! (Likely thanks to the Miracle grow I was socking to the regal geraniums there.)

My poor delphiniums were not at their best this summer. I had dug most of them out of the long bed in the spring in order to clean up that bed, remove as much of the long grass roots growing rampantly there... That may have set the delphiniums back somewhat compared to last summer when they grew profusely, about 7 feet tall! Plus this year their leaves were decimated by some nasty garden insect or other. My poor lupines had their leaves ravaged, too and the marigold which I had planted in my triangular stack stone bed to replace the first eaten batch were also decimated. I guess I had other things on my mind this summer as I didn't clue in as to who/ what the culprits were.

I finally went online and Googled it... It was either a Earwigs or slugs. I decided that, yes, it could very likely be slugs since we have had problems with them before in the veg garden especially  among the lettuce. The slugs had the perfect hiding places under all the bark that I had added to mulch the flower beds. 

I took 4 empty cat food tins from our recycle bin and sunk them into 2 of my flower beds, then filled them with beer and water. In one night alone I caught over 60 slugs, drowned in the watery beer traps! Yay!!!

Yay, I won this battle!!!

I replenished the traps with fresh beer and had dozens more! I discovered quite a few slugs lurking under my garden statues waiting for the sun to start going down so they could continue their destruction! I squished a few, snipped a few with the garden shears, but that seemed to gross so I tossed the rest head first into the beer. I think I need to add a few more traps to one other bed as well.

And more importantly:  MAKE A NOTE IN MY GARDEN JOURNAL TO START SETTING OUT BEER TRAPS IN JUNE NEXT YEAR!!!  

Once the nesting song birds have raised their families and left our property, the slugs take over! (UGH!) Where are the hungry robins and house wrens when you need them?!

Okay let's end this post with a more palatable picture:

One of my favourite geraniums this year along with diamond frost Euphorbia and 'small leaf'

Another slug solution:

Add sliced cucumbers to an aluminum pie tin with some water. Apparently it creates some kind of electric shock when the slugs slide in. (Not tested yet.)

Add epsom salts around your plants ( Slugs don't like to crawl over salt). I tried this solution but of course it rained the very next day. The salt might not be good for a flower bed anyway...

Earwigs Bait:

Equal parts soy sauce, cooking oil, and corn syrup (or molasses). Cover 1/2 inch in bottom of container and sink container into the ground to brim. Cover partially to keep out the rain and to make it dark. I have not tried this solution either as I have not had an earwig problem (to my knowledge.)

Happy gardening! :D