Healthy soil and sustainable growing

["Laura McKenzie" <laurabrownmckenzie@worldnet.att.net>]

I've noticed small slugs but since my plants grow very quickly in the straw, 
the slugs don't bother them.  The slugs don't seem to care about a tomato or 
a melon after its about 10 inches.  I time the application of the straw.  I 
put it down about three weeks after the plant is going.  For lettuce, I 
mulch after the weather starts to warm to keep the lettuce cool.  I don't 
mulch when the lettuce is small.   Keep in mind that slugs go after weak, 
stressed plants.  If yours aren't, you'll have less damage.

   We have about 7000 or more square feet of raised beds.  I grow rye in 
the paths and around the borders of every bed as well as in some of the beds 
over the winter.  We hand pull or cut it all because most of my raised beds 
are bordered in boulders we've hauled off the mountain. The rye is very much 
needed for mulch mostly and the spots where we pull (the borders and paths) 
are planted right away again in a summer cover crop. The rye also suppressed 
the bermuda grass that gives me so much grief.  If I can keep a border of 
rye 18 inches wide around a bed, the bermuda doesn't intrude as easily. 
Today my index finger is split in several places from pulling bermuda (known 
also as wiregrass here.)

 Right now the mulch is what is keeping the garden going.  We're in a 
drought.  Its like growing food back when I lived in New Mexico!

  One more thing about slugs.... we're huge green chile eaters.  In Alabama 
its a little hard to find green chiles and we only go home to visit every 4 
years or so. Right now I'm down to my last bag of frozen green chiles from 
my last trip to New Mexico.  We brought home 5 bushels on that trip.  I need 
every plant I can get.  I noticed that slugs or *something* eat chile plants 
with relish.  This year I surrounded each plant with pinecones, sweetgum 
seed balls, and chestnut hulls.  I only lost one.  I have about 50 plants.

Laura
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Laura's Homeschooling, Garden, and Genealogy Site
is found here: http://home.att.net/~ekyorigins
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