The War in My Garden

The conflicts around the world these days are disturbing and somewhat scary.  Although I’m not involved, they still raise in me a level of anxiety that I could do without.

Now a war has started in my own garden and I am directly involved.  Like all wars, it costs money, and there are often unexpected surprise attacks from two different aggressors.

I’m the lone defender.

Here are the two aggressive parties.  On first glance they look harmless, but they are unrelenting if not dealt with.

Aggressor - Deer

The deer come by our house daily and usually at night.  They help themselves to the leaves on the bottom branches of our trees, which doesn’t do any lasting harm as the trees have leaves that the deer can’t reach.

Aggressor - Slugs

I had planted lupins near the same trees, but last year the blooms were short lived.  The deer cleaned off the blooms and the buds, while the slugs settled on the leaves during the evening.   Over a couple of weeks, the lupins looked like they had been attacked by tiny drones.

In the backyard garden I had a small bush that had settled in well over the two years since I planted it.  This year I decided to move the Lupins to the backyard garden, out of the reach of the deer, and replace their old location at the side yard with the small bush.

Both plants settled in well and the lupins produced some of the best looking blooms we’ve seen from them.

The sneak attacks by the aggressors started in late July.

One morning I was sitting in my easy chair in the living room, reading and enjoying my morning coffee.  Out of the corner of my eye I sensed some motion.  I turned to see a white tail deer meandering across our front patio.  At first, I thougt it was a nice way to start my day, but then I noticed the deer  was chewing something.  I put down my book, went out the front door and round to the side of the house to check out the greenery.  Sure enough, the healthy but small bush I had recently moved there was partially decimated.  All the young leaves at the top had been neatly nipped off.  I looked down the front street and saw the culprit checking out the low hanging branches of the neighbours’ trees.

Clearly, a couple more early morning visits by a deer would mean the end of my bush.

The bush after the deer attack. The branch encircled shows where the deer nipped off tasty new leaves. The rest are new fresh leaves getting started.

The lupins in the backyard were doing well. 

The Lupins, before the attacks began. They were beautiful and healthy specimens.

I had been concerned as two years before I had slugs nibbling on the nearby delphinium.  Up to that morning all was well with both the delphinium and the lupins.  Then, about a week later, I found a few newly formed lupin blooms were completely destroyed and the tel-tale signs of slugs appeared on the leaves.

A devastated new lupin bloom

Several slugs were nibbling on the lupin leaves

My war was on!

My first defence was for the bush.  That cost about $35 for a mesh screen placed around it.  That let the sun in, but kept the deer out.  It is working well, although it isn’t a thing of beauty.

My defence of the lupins is not so simple.

To protect my delphiniums in previous years, I lured slugs into traps comprised of small fish tins filled with beer.  The slugs come out at night and in the first few mornings I would have anywhere from 20 to 50 slugs of varying sizes dead in each of my traps.  After that, there would be a few every morning, but never none.  Regardless, my delphiniums thrived.

This Spring a hardware store in Calgary advertised a slug trap developed in England.  England has an over abundance of slugs due to their wet climate so I thought the trap would be well designed and effective.  I bought one for $25, put it in place near the lupins, and filled up the internal containers with beer.  Over the first few evenings I caught one slug.  After that disappointment, I went back to the fish tins and beer only to discover that, again, I only caught one slug.  The lupins were still showing the results of evening attacks.  For some strange reason, the slugs were attracted to the lupins rather than the beer.  I don’t understand that.  In the literature I’ve read on the subject, the slugs are strongly attracted to the beer and can’t help plunging themselves into the beer bath in the cups and to their death.

I had to raise the my defensive measures.  Tedious as it is, it’s effective.

What’s required is for me to go out to the lupins in the garden after the sun has set, headlamp lit, flashlight in hand and search every Lupin leaf and stem for slugs.  I’ve been doing that for a week and every night I find 3 to 4 of them on the lupins.  I hand pick them off the plant and reduce them to their basic form, which is water.  I confess, I feel  delighted in those moments.

The Hunter at work in the night

So, that’s my lot for the rest of the summer . . . evening visits to pick bits of moving slime off my plants.  That’s not a lot of fun when it’s raining or in the cool Fall evenings, but it’s either that or dig up the lupins.  I don’t think I have any choice as the beauty of the lupins wins me over every time.

I continue to wonder what my neighbours think about the weird old man groping though the garden every night.  So far, no one has called the police.

Esoterica

Most of my neighbours don’t have slug problems.  What I’ve concluded is that the slugs arrived in my yard with the bark I use for ground cover around my bushes—a gift from the west coast.  When we lived in Coquitlam just outside of Vancouver the slugs and snails were plentiful.  After a rain they would be slithering all over the trails in the park near our home.  We didn’t have a garden then so I never knew about the damage they can cause.