Tag Archives: Hostas

Half a Hundredweight of Slugs?

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Last night, having collected a particularly impressive haul of slus, I decided to weigh them. I placed another ice cream box on top and tipped away the water.

Even More Slugs
I weighed the two bxes with slugs and without and the difference was a pound and a quarter. I’ve been collecting most nights since the Hostas started to sprout and have guessed at perhaps an average of eight ounces a night. This could mean I’ve destroyed over fifty pounds of slugs this year.

Despite collecting thousands of them I feel I still don’t understand slugs. There is a very large clump of Disporopsis pernyi and almost every night there are two or three large slugs in one small area of it feeding on its foliage, but not elsewhere in the plant. They have practically defoliated a Kirengeshoma plant in one spot and about twenty feet away another clump is almost untouched. I would love to know whether the ‘innocent’ orange slug feeding on pigeon or fox poo is the same species as the identical looking animals eating the Dahlias, Hostas etc.. Innocent or otherwise they have all met the same fate!

Two Days Dry, We’re Promised!

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I don’t know about you, but I’m a bit fed up with this drought! The ‘experts’ never mention that gardeners wont have been using their hose pipes a great deal for the last five or six weeks, not to mention farmers, who wont have been irrigating anything. Also they have been saying the water will have been taken up by trees and not soaked in. Many trees have only just got leaves on them and wont have been taking up water. Surely the situation must be much better for water companies now!

What has been having a field day with all the rain are the molluscs. As someone who tries to protect their Hostas, Epimediums and other vulnerable plants without the use of too many toxic slug pellets, I use the capture and destroy method. I go out with a torch and collect a range of undesirable creatures. As well as slugs and snails you can catch Lily Beetles, Black Vine and other weevils and night caterpillars all about their destructive work, once it is dark. One does of course have to have a degree of determination to get out of

Yuck
the arm chair and trudge round the garden stooping low in the rain. However, I am convinced I would have had considerably fewer Epimedium shoots and flowers and more holes in many plants had I not been so dedicated. The picture is one recent ice cream box of slugs, collected in the rain during a session of about an hour.

Friends of the Magnolias Garden

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Karen & Denis, Hard Workers
We are no Hyde Hall, but we can now boast a voluntary gardening team of two, who are willing to give occasional assistance in the garden. They require no more than a little bit of feeding and watering and small divisions of choice Hostas.

Both Denis and Karen are knowledgeable gardeners who have only small gardens of their own.

Today, Denis and I set up water pots with Waterlilies and Irises etc.

Karen Cleaning Hostas
Meanwhile Karen was weeding Hosta pots and potting them on where necessary, and taking modest divisions from them for herself and Denis. She fed the refreshed and cleaned pots with a slow release fertiliser and then spread a thin layer of sheep’s’ wool pellets on top. She has found in her garden, this is effective at dissuading slugs and snails from going onto the compost and attacking the foliage. Time will tell how effective this will be here.