Tuesday, April 23, 2013

Thwarting the Pests

Something's been eating the young cruciferous plants: the broccoli, the kale, the cabbages. Not sure what's doing it. They're growing right next to the garlic, and the garlic was mulched with half-composted straw.

I got tired of feeding the pests, and took action.

The first action was to add slugbait around the plants. No success; the next morning, a couple more plants were missing leaves.

I should have been more scientific about this, changing only one variable at a time, but I was tired of losing plants. So I did two things:
  • I tore all the straw mulch out from around the garlic (it didn't need it any  more anyway!), and 
  • I added a bit of diatomatceous earth around the victimized plants. 

Success! They've stopped being devoured. I found at least one slug among the composting straw, so that could have been our culprit. But I've left the diatoms out anyway.

No comments:

Post a Comment