Cooperative Living

It’s Point Roberts, so I could be writing about trash, of course; or about the garden, or strawberries, or wildlife, or even the border because what else do we do up here? Today it’s strawberries and wildlife.

When we left for B.C. two weeks ago, the slugs, not me, were eating the newly ripened strawberries, and as I left, I removed the nets that were keeping the raccoons out. As part of the live and let-live deal with the wild life, I figured that the raccoons ought to have an even chance with the slugs at the berries, or at least they ought to once my desires were out of the picture.

Upon our return, I didn’t rush out to see what had happened because I figured I knew what had happened. Between them, the raccoons and slugs ate all the berries. However, when I did chance to look at the three beds, I discovered that they were filled with strawberries, ripe strawberries. Apparently, it was too dry for the slugs (no rain during that absence and no watering of the strawberries except from the water table which is fairly high near the strawberry beds) and the raccoons, I assume, are on vacation.

I gathered a basket full and we ate these lovely, succulent, deep red and sweet strawberries for dessert last night: a little powdered sugar added to my bowl, a little demerarra sugar added to Ed’s. And this morning, I went out and gathered another quantity…about two quarts in all. But this morning’s gathering, on my hands and knees caused me to notice that about half of the leaves of the strawberry plants were missing, the stems, though, sticking straight up. The mark of deer munching.

Almost too much cooperative living to my mind, I’m afraid. Surely something else is going on here, but I don’t know what it is.

Strawberry Thieves

I never wanted to be a detective, have very limited interest in detective stories, even. It’s true that, as a child, I read all the Nancy Drew novels, but it was less because I admired her skills at solving mysteries than that I was extremely interested in her independent and adventurous life, which included a car. I would have been just as enthusiastic if she’d been a teen-age social worker or labor organizer, I daresay.

Nevertheless, I am forced to address the mystery of the missing strawberries. Last Wednesday, I read in the Vancouver paper that the local strawberries would probably start ripening this weekend; they would, said the local farmer, be sweeter (because of the recent hot weather) but smaller (because of the longer and cooler spring). I went to my strawberry beds and, sure enough, all had berries just beginning to suggest that red would be their final color.

I don’t get much from these strawberry beds because someone else gets there first. Maybe four years ago, the entire crop was consumed by the slugs. The next spring, I removed all the grasses and weeds from around the wooden edges of the beds (which are raised) and had Ed cover it with copper mesh which slugs are said not to be willing to cross because it causes a slight electric charge when combined with their propulsive slime.

That summer, which was pretty wet, the strawberries were largely consumed by sow bugs which are attracted to both strawberries and to damp places. The next spring, I carefully lined the raised beds with straw, tucking it gently around each plant so that the berries would be lifted up from any wet surfaces that sow bugs might be attracted to. That summer, there were no slugs and there were no sow bugs eating the berries. Instead, the raccoons ate them.

This spring, the copper mesh was still there (although I didn't do much work on getting the grasses next to it removed), I refreshed the straw manger, and in early June I covered the beds from the top with fine nylon mesh. Thursday evening, there was one berry almost perfectly ripe; Friday morning it was entirely gone and the net near it had been somewhat disturbed. I fastened the net more securely and Friday evening, there were two strawberries almost ready. This morning, they were both half eaten, in the manner of slug dining. But there were several more berries within a hair of being reddish all over, though not really perfectly ripe. I went back this evening before dinner, thinking to get there before the slugs and the raccoons (and it’s just been too dry for the sow bugs), and the two ripest berries had been munched halfway through. We ate the other two for dinner. Perfectly not-quite-ripe strawberries--definitely smaller, definitely not sweeter--but at least in our mouths.

So, at the moment, as near as I can tell, it’s Raccons-1, Slugs-4, and Us-2. That’s not good enough.

Negotiations

We have now moved/are moving past the threat to growing plants from the deer and onto the full-bore threat from the slugs.  Some years when we have pretty cold or pretty long winters, the slug populations seem to diminish somewhat, or at least to consist of smaller slugs.  This year, however, despite the long AND cold winter, the slugs are plentiful and sizable.  A friend reports that she and her husband are collecting a couple of hundred of an evening.  And I don’t ask what they are doing with this collection, but I doubt if it involves a happy, museum-type ending.

I try not to plant much that the slugs are interested in.  In my experience, they don't have much interest in peonies.  When we bought our house 18 years ago, there was one sizeable, pink peony growing.  It kept getting bigger and we bought three more of different colors (white, red-violent, and darker pink) to keep it company.  Then, two years ago, I decided it was time to address the aging condition of the original peony which had now begun to produce fewer blooms.  So one day in the fall, I had Ed dig it up for me.  It was an enormous root/corm/whatever that part of the peony is called.  I read and read on the internet and did as I was told:  cut it up in smaller pieces with several eyes at least in each section, let it dry for a bit, replanted it.  And replanted it.  And then replanted it a little more because there was so much, with great hopes that the planting depth was right, which seems to be a critical factor with peonies.

I re-planted maybe 40 of them, and their first spring, at least 30 of them showed up to join the circus that is my garden.  Only two or three of these new plants bloomed last year, but I was actually surprised that any of them did.  I thought they might need some time to grow up.  Now, here they are all back, but the slugs have decided, given the abundance, that they might at least try out peony stalks in the off chance that they’re worth the effort.  What they have done, apparently, is climb about six inches up the 10-inch stalk, nibble around on the under-side of the stalk and then decide they don’t taste good.  They jump off, I imagine, plummeting to the ground, shortly followed by the upper end of the stalk which now has insufficient support because of the wedge taken out below it.

Two peony stalks gone so far.  This may require more serious measures.  Or maybe I just share my bounteous peony stalks with the slugs if they can show some discretion.  I mean, when I last offered to share a dozen small dahlias with them, they ate them all overnight.

Strawberry Success

During World War II, my family had a Victory Garden and after my dad got off work, we would all pile in our tiny car and drive out to it and work in the dirt while there was yet light. I became an enthusiastic gardener in those days (I was almost 5 when Pearl Harbor was bombed), and after the war, when we bought a house with an acre of gardening land, I came into my own as a gardener. Southeastern Idaho has heavy, clay soil and precious little rain, but irrigation ditches are provided and things will grow. My father gave me total responsibility for the strawberry bed and I worked it, ate and sold its fruits, and went to summer camp for an extra week each summer on its profits.

But my strawberry growing days ended when I left that house. There were a few plants here and there, but nothing like that large original bed until four years ago when we bought the lot adjoining our house. There, I found six formerly-producing raised strawberry beds. Alas, they were in disastrous shape, filled with as many weeds as strawberry plants, the wooden surrounds begin to rot out, the ground sodden all spring. I worked the first spring just to get the weeds cleaned out (bindweed, buttercups, and various grasses, all destined to reemerge from the winter’s gloom, year after year). Once I had actually found the plants and brought them into the light, I realized that three of the beds actually weren’t in the light because a willow tree had grown so large as to send them into perpetual shade. So I gave up on those. The other three beds produced few flowers and no edible berries.

Then, in the second year, I had three raised beds. I weeded them, I fertilized them, I improved their wooden surrounds, I kept track of the poor drainage--which their raised bed status helped considerably—I talked to them companionably, and in year two, they bloomed, fruited, and showed great promise. I left them alone in late June just as the fruits were beginning to show a red blush and returned, two weeks later, to find them all chewed up by slugs and sow bugs.

By year three, I had found a 10-inch wide roll of copper mesh to wrap around the edges of the three beds. Slug slime and copper produce a slight electric charge that, wisely, slugs avoid. I got it on in early spring, hoping that the beds weren’t already full of slugs that now, couldn’t get out of the strawberry beds. I did the routine: fertilizer, weeding, and cheerful conversation, and strawberries began to appear. No sign of slug damage, although I hadn’t yet defeated the sow bugs. After the reliable two week absence in late June, I returned to find all the strawberries eaten by raccoons. But, even the raccoon leavings showed no signs of slugs.

For year four, I improved the copper mesh coverage (no slugs), spread straw generously around and under each plant (no sow bugs), bought nets to cover the beds (no raccoons), and talked non-stop to the plants. I didn’t really expect much from it because we had record rains all this spring and the plants were now virtually hydroponically grown, at least as far as their roots were concerned: the plants themselves, though, were sitting well up on the straw (perhaps from this comes the word ‘straw-berries’?).

After the rains, came heat and no rain. Two weeks of heat and three weeks of no rain, that famous two weeks that I am gone turned this year into three weeks. I expected to return to find the plants dried up and the berries dried up with them. But on getting here, there were bright red berries all over the beds. Success! I have gathered this past week about 3 pounds of strawberries and we have eaten them with great pleasure. They, of course, bear no resemblance to what the stores up here sell, those large, hard, beautifully-shaped, beautifully-colored (on the outside; white on the inside), items referred to as California Strawberries. Ours are smaller, juicier, more flavorful, somewhat misshapen, reminiscent of the ones I grew sixty+ years ago, but they are our own and I love them. My dad would be proud of them and me. And if I paid myself commensurately for the pleasure of eating them, I could surely afford an extra week—maybe two--at camp.

The A Team

This morning I went outside early and found this slug checking out the compost bin. Here it is in all its glory: 7- inches long when at rest and prepared to eat anything in its path, probably including the compost bin if only it could get its teeth to penetrate plastic. The bane of northwestern gardeners, the slug comes in three main colors up here: yellow-ish (the banana slug, which is native), very black (an illegal immigrant), and the gray/darker-gray spotted slug (whose provenance is a mystery to me).

I used to plant flowers that I liked until I had a dozen dahlia seedlings consumed within the first 12 hours of their residence in my garden by the resident slug corps. That taught me a definitive lesson. You want to look at dahlias: go to the yard of someone who has the patience to deal with slugs.

But they are amazing creatures and the banana slug is the more appealing of the bunch if one can get over the destructiveness, the sliminess, and the all-over bonelessness of the critters. They do, after all, travel on highways that they make themselves as they creep by. Imagine if cars, e.g., could just lay down asphalt roadways as part of their functioning. I know, a bad idea.

In Eugene, Oregon, they have a big slug parade and festival every year with, I am told, a 40-foot plastic banana slug. They also elect a Slug Queen. Apparently, they don’t select a Slug King. Why is that?

The University of California, Santa Cruz, shares our northwestern damp and grey climate and also shares our slug population. UCSC was started back in the 70’s as a kind of post-60’s experimental university without a regular letter grading system, without sororities and fraternities, with a lot of emphasis on ecology, and without a big inter-collegiate athletic program. The school did have athletics, but it was pretty low key and most of it was intra-college. But when the school needed a mascot for a school team, the banana slug was informally selected by the students as the school's mascot. The clarion call, ‘Go you Slugs!' was exactly the kind of battle cry that marked UCSC as a 60’s kind of college.

But times changed, the greedy 80’s arrived, Santa Cruz students wanted regular grades so that they could more easily get into graduate school, and inter-collegiate athletics seemed to be a way of attracting more students and more money. The Chancellor decided that the school now needed a more dignified mascot and the team players themselves were persuaded that the UCSC Sea Lions had the right sound for winners like them. ‘Not so fast,’ said the students, who continued to yell, 'Go you Slugs!!’ at all games. Eventually, the Chancellor not only backed down but became a supporter, and the Santa Cruz Banana Slugs they officially became. And then, five years ago, a perhaps even more startling triumph for an old hippy school: The Readers’ Digest declared the Santa Cruz Banana Slug the ‘Best Team Mascot.’

The difference between the SC students’ affection for the banana slugs and my own disaffection doubtless lies in the fact that they are students and I am a gardener. Nevertheless, we both appreciate irony. I am, therefore, trying to think of the slug corps in my own yard as athletes, engaged in some sport that I do not yet entirely understand. I am afraid, however, the game is one that pits The Slugs against The Flowers. ‘Go You Flowers!’ I’ll be calling from the stands.