A little war in my potato patch
A few days ago, as I was checking out my potato plants, I noticed that many of them were severely damaged. Leaves had been eaten away as well as stems. It honestly looked as though they had been raped and pillaged by a wandering band of vikings.
I was pretty upset. I’d grown those potato plants from seed spuds and I’d been kind of proud of how good they were doing out in my little garden. And now they were looking devastated and destroyed, almost lifeless.
When I told Becky about my problem she went right to Home Depot looking for a solution. The lady who helped her seemed to know exactly what was destroying my plants…and what to do about it.
“Thrips!” she said. Central Alaska has had an invasion of Thirps this year and they’re hitting everyone who likes to grow things. She said to spray everything with soapy water and that should get rid of the Thirps.
Well, Becky brought home a bottle of Dawn dishwashing soap & I immediately mixed up a nice batch of soapy water then sprayed the dickens out of anything that was green and growing.
“There! That oughta take care of there there little Thirps!” I told Becky when I went back inside for the evening.
But the next morning, when I went outside, my potato plants looked even worse, even more or their leaves were missing…important parts, too.
“What the heck!” I muttered to myself.
So I hurried into my studio & looked up Thirps on the Internet. They were ornery little rascal OK. And they sure could do damage to plants by the looks of the pictures I was looking at.
Trouble was, the damage they did just didn’t look anything like the damage being done to my plants.
Hmmmmm, something wasn’t right here.
I went back out to my garden, got down on my knees, and looked very, very closely at my potato plants, looking for the culprit who was eating them.
But I found nothing. I didn’t even see a spider. Not even a mosquito.
So this morning I got out of bed at 5 a.m., just before sunrise, & went out there with a little flashlight, thinking maybe the damage was being done at night, as I slept.
Bending over, peering at that little circle of light through sleepy eyes, I was startled by what I saw.
It was one of those rare ”Ah Haa” moments for me.
“Ah Haa!” I shouted out.
Slugs!! All over my potatoe plants. Dozens, maybe hundred of them.
“You little buggers! I’ll fix you!” I said, running back to the house for a salt shaker.
I killed a lot of them in the next few minutes, but I was pretty sure the war was far from over. I still had work to do and battle plans to make.
Putting first things first I spent the remainder of the morning weeding and cleaning up the garden, trying to make it less hospitable for slugs.
Now I have a really nice looking potato patch, if you don’t look to closely, & try to ignore the plants that have slug damage. But I think, if I was a slug, it wouldn’t look too inviting anymore. It’s too clean, with not enough places to hide out during the daylight hours.
I know I’ve not completely won the war against slugs, yet, and that more of them will come, continuing their attacks on my potatoes, but at least I know now who the enemy is and what he looks like, and I’ll be out in my garden early every morning from now on.
Salt shaker in hand.
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This is what those stupid slugs did to my precious potato plants as I slept at night. Hopefully, now that I know what to fight against, new leaves will form to replace the damaged ones.
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My potato plants after I’d finished weeding and cleaning the area up. Well, almost finished. The lawn wasn’t quite mowed when I took this. The boards are there to fool slugs. They will suppose it is a safe place to hide during the day. But I will know better than them because I am smarter. I will just lift the boards and squash them!
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There was some encouragement for me as I fought the slug war this morning. I really got excited when I accidentally unearthed these beauties as I was weeding. Aren’t they purty, though! We’re gonna have potatoes yet. I just know it.
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