If it's not cats it's slugs...

Ater the paté incident the instances of cats in the garden seems to have declined. So far the ultrasonic things seem to be doing their job, and my morning round of shit-clearing has been put on hold. Instead I walk about the garden with tweezers looking for slugs. Now I know that slugs and snails are a vital part of the garden ecosystem, however there is mass imbalance at Chateau L, likely caused by the extremely favourable conditions in our small suburban garden grounds. By favourable conditions I mean the very large number of plants that I painstakingly water to ensure healthy and consistent growth. Healthy, consistent and delicious growth....

It is a sad fact that both the slugs and I seem to like the same plants. Mostly I grow plants as I like to look at them, but some of them I grow to eat. The slugs just like to eat them. I mean maybe they appreciate the aesthetics, who can say, but the physical manifestation is that they just eat them. Ravenously, and these are not compatible points of view. What is really annoying is that there are plenty of plants in my garden that I neither want to eat nor look at. They are called weeds, and the slugs pay them no attention whatsoever. Each evening millions of them crawl out from under pots, cracks in the terrace, paving stones, and make a straight line for all my foliage plants. 

Tetrapanax papyrifer 'Rex', recently shorn of a nymber of its lower leaves

There is two plants which they adore. Firstly my beans, which have been an utter disaster this year. Between the slugs and the blackfly there is essentially nothing left, I think I have had one small serving of runner beans despite all the work I have put in. And don't even talk to me about cucumbers. Secondly I have this quite incredible plant called a Tetrapanax with wonderful velvety leaves that can reach a metre across, held on long stalks. It's a real centrepiece, a standout plant. Or it would be if it the leaves were not mercilessly eaten to leave just the ribs. The slugs have organised themselves into work gangs to ensure that they demolish these leaves with maximum efficiency, and I can come out in the morning to find just the skeleton of a what had been a pristine leaf left. Hence the tweezers.

I cannot bring myself to kill slugs. I tell myself that in addition to all the nice things they eat they also perform a stack of low-level garden maintenance that I probably don't even notice, but which if they were not around I almost certainly would notice. The top of the garden has most of the plants that both I and the slugs care deeply about, and so I patrol this area with a large pair of tweezers and a flower pot, collecting them up and then taking them down to the bottom of the garden where I chuck them behind the shed. Once they have sorted themselves out they no doubt switch on their homing beacons and start heading back up, but at least this way they're not just all hanging around at the metaphorical table waiting for the next sitting. There does seem to be an inexhaustible supply of them though, so either they travel much faster than I give them credit for, or we are in an endless sisyphian loop whereby at any one point one third of the garden's slugs are behind the shed, one third are making their way back up the garden (pausing briefly for a bean snack), and the remaining third are chowing down as much ornamental leaf matter as possible before their inevitable next journey to the shed. 

This seems to be working in that so far as the Tetrapanax has been able to produce new leaves quicker than one third of the slugs can eat them. The leaves are absolutely gigantic and in hot weather grow incredibly quickly, but it's critical to the visual appeal of the plant that the leaves remain intact - although to be fair those ones they do eat tend to be at the bottom of the plant and so can be removed without spoiling the canopy. The beans, being much smaller, get eaten that much more quickly and my sweeps of the vegetable patch are currently only just sufficient to keep the damage to sustainable levels and I fear that I am going to lose the battle. This raises an interesting question, a conflict of sorts, as I've also seen slugs eating cat turds. As you can imagine this is a handy benefit at Chateau L, and one that is hard to ignore. But what would I prefer here? Morning sweeps of the garden with tweezers to remove slugs accompanied by the vague possibility of beans, but then also a morning sweep of the garden with a shovel to remove and bury cat shit? Not very enjoyable. Or should I do nothing, let nature take its course and accept the loss of beans and other plants as the price of turd removal? Tough one. My gut feel is that the slugs prefer beans to fecal matter and that given the choice will skirt round a turd and head straight for the beans. That would be my choice frankly. I suppose I could test this with a carefully placed bean.... I don't suppose there is any way to train slugs is there? Or genetically modify them to only devour one thing and not the other? Thought not. But think of the benefit! Maybe in my next life as a malacologist. Now there's a word that doesn't get used very often!