THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, April 23, 1995 TAG: 9504210081
SECTION: HOME PAGE: G12 EDITION: FINAL
COLUMN: GARDENING
SOURCE: ROBERT STIFFLER
LENGTH: Medium: 59 lines
I hope you can give me clues on getting rid of slugs. I have used the poisons sold in garden stores, but they are of little use. The cold weather did not slow the slugs. They seem to have burrowed down into the soil and are waiting for warm weather. The other evening our dog dish was left in the yard for 30 minutes. When I picked up the dish to bring indoors, there was a slug in it. Perhaps some of your readers have found something to rid their yards of them. We used beer to attract them, but there are hundreds more.
Betty Wallace, Portsmouth
The chemical I've found to work best is Deadline, a paste in a bottle that is sometimes labeled Ortho Deadline. You squeeze it out of the bottle, putting a stripe or circle around the plants you want to protect. The product is poisonous to slugs. I've always had a dog, with no problems caused by Deadline.
Slugs and snails are attracted to damp, moist places. Your letter sounds like your garden is wet, damp and shady. Prune the trees to allow more sunlight, plant shrubs to attract birds that will eat slugs, remove old boards or bricks they hide under and do everything you can to make your garden drier.
Slugs will not crawl over wood ashes, lime or sand. You can sprinkle those in the problem areas. Also a low fence of a strip of copper will conduct enough electricity from the soil that it shocks slugs and drives them away. But your letter sounds like you need to kill an army of slugs rather than detour them. If any reader has a plan, please share it.
Can you give me information on where I might get some of that Black Indian Corn you spoke about in your Feb. 5 column?
Percy Tillett, Manteo, N.C.
The column was about vegetables the Indians grew. The best source for Indian seeds is Native Seeds/SEARCH. They have hundreds of types of seeds grown by the Indians. I don't see a black corn listed, but they carry several blue corns, and in the garden world, blue and black are often used interchangeably. The catalog costs $1, mailed to 2509 N. Campbell Ave., No. 325,Tucson, Ariz. 85719.
I bought a garden book recently that stressed the importance of using 2 inches of mulch. Is that important? Can pine straw be used instead of straw or leaf mulch?
Art Dolson, Virginia Beach
Your garden book gave you good advice. Flowers, vegetables, trees and shrubs will perform better if surrounded by not more than 3 inches of mulch. Pine straw is an excellent mulch and much more attractive than regular straw or leaves. They all deteriorate with time and should be replaced when that happens. There is a bad habit in this area of over-mulching, piling it deeper and higher.
Mulch prevents weeds, helps preserve moisture and maintains the soil at a more even temperature. by CNB