Slugs

[Jim]

This year the Milky Garden Slug and Earwigs have been a major problem this year due to extreme moisture here in the Pacific Northwest (we are at ~125% of winter snow/rain).  After removed all litter & mulch, I exhausted beer/yeasty sugar pit traps, corrugated cardboard/newspaper/board traps, barriers and even sand, I needed to escalate to iron phosphate.  I never like to use even "natural"/OMRI/Organic pesticide controls, but sometime you just have to if you want to eat.

Here is how we started out:

6-7 weeks before planting
1. Begin brassica seed blocks, staggering as needed

2 weeks before planting
1.  Cut crimson clover to the soil surface (feed to chickens)
2.  Top inch or so gets a light till-in by hand, and located any grubs (feed to chickens)
3.  Install pit traps/board traps in each raised bed (4 4x8' beds in this case)
4.  Cover with row covers to ensure no night moths or other grubs get started out early in season
5.  Daily removal of bugs/refresh traps as needed (due to rain)
6.  Start backup brassica starts as a Plan B

1 week before planting
1.  Plant sacrificial cabbage, brocoli, cauliflower and kholrabi starts (in blocks) to see how bad the predation was (canary in coal mine)
2.  Daily inspection of traps and plants

Planting day
1.  If predation is managed well, plant out 25% in each bed
2.  If predation is still managed, plant out 25% more in each bed until all is planted

The end result was all sacrifical plants were sacrificed    And I kept up using traps and collecting slugs/earwigs.  There are just a lot of crafty bugs in there this year it seems.  So I am using Sluggo from Monterey to control for slugs, which I wouldn't normally use in food beds.  After about 3 days, all predation stopped cold.  I then planted per my Planting day timeline, and all is well.  I will be working this summer to build removable hutches to enclose chickens as part of the routine for next time, even though they wont go for slugs, they will eat earwigs.  If only I had a couple ducks...ah ducks. honey? ah well.  Also, the beds are surrounded by gravel, not that that stops slugs or earwigs, as they also like to live in the rock.

Thoughts?

[heliotropicmoth]

Chickens wont eat slugs? Really? That sucks. 

[Jim]

Well mine sure don't that's for sure... on a positive though, when they browse/peck them they get pretty mangled.

[heliotropicmoth]

Maybe if you seasoned them..... 

[Mil]

I just went and picked a bunch of snails and slugs from my place and walked them over to the neighbor's chickens. Wow, those guys ate them up, and then looked at me for more snacks.

[ShenandoahJoe]

In her The Resilient Gardener, Carol Deppe assures us that ducks love to eat slugs.

[Jim]

Carol Deppe is not too far from here in Western Oregon.  I have her books as well.  Good author!

[Mil]

I just finished reading Resilient. Loved that book. I ended ordering Hannan Popbean seeds from her. They are germinating as we "speak".