Garden thread

I finally have the supplies I need to corral the raspberries properly, so that's on my to-do list for today. Part of the point is to keep the dogs out as well - they bite off the canes a few inches above the ground and play keepaway with them 😑 Up to now I've had a pallet propped up, braced between the fence and the corner of the house, with a decorative box that'll have flowers in it eventually in front of it to prevent the dogs pushing it over, but through there is also the only access to the hose tap so I've had to move the whole setup every day to water the garden. I can't wait to have something more practical!

And by last one, I meant picture of the spaghetti squash plant!

Variety is the spice of life, right!?! This is what my free gift of seeds should look like if I grow them correctly. I'll pot a few this week and see what happens. I'm enjoying this because it's kind of a fun and hopeful experiment.

One week since I potted the seed, wow...!!!

In trying to beat the slugs to my strawberries, I went to the local hardware store to buy Sluggo, as suggested on MFP, yesterday. All out due to supply chains. One guy showed me Seven and I asked if it was organic...oh no, lots of poisons in that stuff. Tell me why they still sell *kitten* like that. Anyways, they also suggested the beer thing, along with cutting an orange or grapefruit in half and placing it cut side down, then next morning it'll be covered in slugs and you can just throw it away. JIC someone needed another 'kill the slugs' idea.

@ReenieHJ Sadly, I agree with you. I use "environmentally friendly" products to wash my dishes, clothes, and most parts of my house and I certainly would not knowingly use chemicals in my garden. I bought the last Seventh Generation dishwasher detergent off the shelf at my work yesterday but it's been sitting there forever. It all works the same to me but I sleep a little better at night if I think I haven't worsened the issue, intentionally.

ReenieHJ wrote: »

In trying to beat the slugs to my strawberries, I went to the local hardware store to buy Sluggo, as suggested on MFP, yesterday. All out due to supply chains. One guy showed me Seven and I asked if it was organic...oh no, lots of poisons in that stuff. Tell me why they still sell *kitten* like that. Anyways, they also suggested the beer thing, along with cutting an orange or grapefruit in half and placing it cut side down, then next morning it'll be covered in slugs and you can just throw it away. JIC someone needed another 'kill the slugs' idea.

Sluggo is good stuff. Iron phosphate. Non-toxic. Slugs do eat it and then that's their end. I use it. I also use home-made bait traps. I used to use beer. Works OK. Most slugs drown, but some find their way out and stumble home. I now add a little flour to make a very thin paste. They don't get out.

Lately, instead of beer, I just proof a little baking yeast with some warm water and sugar (just a little), then make a VERY thin dough/batter with just flour and water. I pour this into some containers and put that out. It's the smell of fermentation that attracts them. Some cheap beer doesn't smell enough like fermentation to attract them as well.

I also leave out snake habitat. Garter snakes eat slugs. Sadly, that also can be slug habitat.

I have definitely struggled with slugs in the past. This year they really pissed me off. I have some oak logs that are inoculated with shiitake. One of them had just barely started to fruit. You couldn't even identify the little growth as a mushroom, but it was. Well, the next morning there was just some dried slug slime on the log and no mushrooms. So now that they started this war, I will go win it.

The flour/water/yeast solution is probably cheaper than Sluggo. There are other brands of slug baits that use iron phosphate. They should be just as good as Sluggo. Look for those. Definitely avoid the other slug killers that are made with metaldehyde. That stuff does work, but it's poisonous to people and animals.

Matador Spinach seedlings

What do y'all think of this for three spaghetti squash plants? Any thoughts, opinions, and suggestions are welcomed. Thank you!

@AnnPT77 Thank you. I have no idea what they are. I ordered seeds off of Etsy, company called Back To Nature and all I know is that they're organic spaghetti squash seeds. I appreciate your input. I'm going to see if I can find out more, whether bush or vine...

LoveyChar wrote: »

@AnnPT77 Thank you. I have no idea what they are. I ordered seeds off of Etsy, company called Back To Nature and all I know is that they're organic spaghetti squash seeds. I appreciate your input. I'm going to see if I can find out more, whether bush or vine...

Purely a wild guess, but if they don't say on the web site or the packet, long-vine seems more probable, especially if it's advertised as an heirloom variety. IME it's more common for old-school varieties of squash, cucumber, and similar vining things to be long-vine, with the more compact hybrid varieties something that has become more popular in the more recent decades, with smaller home gardens and the popularity of growing veggies in pots.

When someone has a large garden space, as would've been more common in subsistence-farming days, the long vine types have some advantages, such as being more prolific (generally), but they do take up a lot of space.