Vanishing dill

[ElizabethB]

In other post you know that I have had an issue with slugs and snails devouring my basil and gerbera daisies. I won that battle with shallow pans of beer and a 3" ring of crushed egg shell around each plant. I did not consider that when denied the basil and gerberas the slimy boogers would attack my dill.

I went to the herb bed to harvest a little dill to cook with this evening and my young dill plants are GONE The slimy trails around where they lived identifies the culprits.

Tomorrow - new plants, pans of beer and egg shells around each plant. Good thing I am making cat food this evening. I will have plenty of egg shells to surround my new plants.

The garden requires such constant attention. Skip a day and something will get to your plants or the weeds will take over. I am late planting my garden. Finished it over the weekend. It looked so nice and pretty and clean. Lots f rain. skipped visiting the garden for one day and weeds were all over the place. Wish my plants grew as fast as the weeds.

[Lindsaylew82]

Wish my plants grew as fast as the weeds

Ditto.

I boiled 12 eggs yesterday! I have shells drying in the sun today. No much, I'm sure it'll help.

[ElizabethB]

Drying them in the sun? WOW You are more ambitious than I am. I just rinse them out and dry/crush them in a towel. Normally the egg shells go into the compost bins but with snails and slugs they are used as a perimeter defense. I called a friend of mine who owns a diner tat serves breakfast. He promised to save the egg shells from tomorrow's breakfast. One morning's egg shells from a diner should be enough to see me through the season.

Slugs and snails BEWARE I am on the attack

[Lindsaylew82]

We have a little diner here that serves all local, free range and organic foods! I'm sure she's already been harassed about her scraps... Eh! What's one more beggar?!?

[ElizabethB]

Speaking of begging - if you are short on greens for your compost bins visit a locally owned produce market or even a grocery store. They trim the veggies before putting them out and pull what is not sellable from the shelves. It gets tossed!

I have done that a couple of times and walked away with a leaf bag FULL. Most of the stuff had to be shredded or cut into smaller pieces then tossed in so as not to have a thick layer that would get slimy.

If you look around it is amazing what you can get free especially from smaller businesses that you visit frequently. I wanted to make Demi Glace. I talked to the butcher in a family owned market that I am in and out of several times a week. I got all of the beef bones I needed FREE. They even cut the large knuckle bones for me. It took about 4 weeks to get enough but I just stuck them in the freezer until I had enough.

Love FREE!

[Lindsaylew82]

Uh....SCORE!!!! That's a real sweet score!

Fortunately, we have an acre of our own and an acre of an elderly neighbor's yard that we cut for him and bag for ourselves! Plenty of greens!

On another subject of begging... I posted another post about browns. A friend of mine from the local paper informed me that there are LOTS of remnant rolls of unprinted newspaper. Imma get all over that! Browns are much harder to find mid summer.

[ElizabethB]

Thanks for the paper tip. I finally got smart and bagged the excess mulched leaves for year round use. I will remember the paper tip the next time I forget to bag my leaves.