SLUGS!!

It seems that since brought the yard back to life we have also "invited" hundreds of slugs to dine on my lovely plants. They essentially devoured my little Radbot Kale seedlings, only 2 of the 6 look like they have any hope of surviving. The Toscano Kale is having a slightly easier time, but is still not particularly happy. And of course they have discovered all my other lovely tender-leafed veggies. To top it all off, the one non-organic pest control I decide I'm willing to try--Slug and Snail Death--is not very partly named since it does not result in the death of my slugs!! So I have resorted to other, much less satisfying and efficient methods:

Hand-destroying them: early morning and dusk visits to the yard are perfect times for slug hunting. Grab them and squash them, and look closely for the babies, they are tiny easy to miss. Supposedly this is one of the best ways to organically control the population, especially if you can get the little ones. Unfortunately this means lots of visits to the yard hunting slugs. I've discovered that placing larger kale leaves from my plants from last year on the ground around the seedlings is an easy way to "catch" them since they go for the easy food first.

Beer Traps: lots of gardeners are skeptical about this method, but I found it at least kills some of them. You take a receptacle of some sort (half a plastic up works great) and dig it into the ground so the top of it is level with the ground and fill with beer. The beer attracts the slugs, slugs get drunk and drown. And it seems like the cheaper the beer the better, Simpler Times (Trader Joe's) seems to work particularly well.

I'm still hoping Riley will develop a taste for slugs...I'm also considering getting a duck...although it might not be too pleased with Riley...