May Week 4

Organic Gardening Calendar
22 Weeks to frost free date in zone 6

By: Sammie Jo Mitchell

The Spring flowering season is over and the summer heat lovers are just beginning to bloom. Cleaning up the residue from Spring and preparing for Summer is this week’s task.

Things you will need:
Snail and Slug Bait
Compost pile

As the spring flowers fade, you must get out in the garden…I recommend the hour or two just before sunset. At this time of day you are less likely to spread disease through dew or plants otherwise being wet, it is generally less hot, and I find that the low sun angles enhance the colors in the garden.

First of all there are the faded buttercups and Lycoris that need to be cleared out. When they are brown or flopped over as you see here;



They are ready to be pulled from the garden. Generally if they are no longer serving the bulb a gentle tug on a hand full will pull them right out.

Buttercups, Lycoris, Tulips all leave behind decaying plant material that attracts snails. These snails function to eat that dying material, which is perfectly OK until they decide they want to eat your Hostas too. If you have more than a ten square foot plot I would not recommend hand picking of the snails. Although mechanical means (hand picking) is the most ecologically safe method of pest removal, it can get to be tedious, unless you have a few 4-5 year olds that will make it a game to collect and crush snails. They make a cool pop sound when you step on them.

Since I have acres of dead and decaying material and no kindergarten class to collect snails for me, I must turn to pesticides to control the snails. After last year’s historic kill off from a late freeze, the snail population has exploded.

There are basically two ways to go about getting rid of the snails. One is organic, the other chemical.

The chemical product you will see on the store shelves at all your big box stores is a product by Ortho called Bug-Getta. Read the label. Down in the lower left hand corner of the bag….”product can be fatal to dogs”. And in the more prominent warnings: "Pets and children should not be present when treating. Active Ingredient: 2% Metaldehyde."

[This from Wikipedia: Metaldehyde is classed as a ‘moderately hazardous’ pesticide by the World Health Organization and is toxic to all animals that ingest it. Metaldehyde is highly toxic by inhalation, moderately toxic by ingestion and slightly toxic by dermal absorption. There is widespread concern that there have been an unacceptable number of poisoning incidents[citation needed], especially involving domestic pets, wild animals and birds. Metaldehyde is also known to be carcinogenic in large quantities or through prolonged exposure.]

For the organic product, again I refer you to Gardens Alive!. (No photo, their stuff comes in brown paper bags printed with vegetable ink) I am not a paid promoter of theirs and there are (I assume) other organic products out there that work just as well. I use the GA! product line in the blog because it is what I have used with success in my yard. That said, the GA! Product Escar-Go Supreme is available by mail order.

Yes there are shipping charges, but generally there is no sales tax, so at least in my State, it’s a wash. Here is the GA! explanation of their product: "Gardens Alive Escargo Contains two potent natural controls. The first is iron phosphate, the original ingredient in the original Escar-Go! Slug and Snail Control. It causes slugs and snails to stop feeding and die within 3 to 6 days. The second is metabolite made by fermenting bacteria (Saccharopolyspora spinosa) that causes insects to stop feeding once they ingest or come into contact with it. This tackles cutworms, earwigs, pill bugs, sow bugs, ants and crickets."

Notice there are no warnings of pet death from it’s use.

How do they compare cost wise? I got these prices off the internet….

Bug-Getta - 2 lbs – coverage: 200 SF cost: $8.49

Escargo Supreme – 13 ounces – Coverage – 1,100 SF cost: $9.95

I know it hurts, but let’s do some math.

Bug-Getta covers 6.25 square feet per ounce
Escargo covers 84.6 square feet per ounce

With those coverage rates you would have to purchase 5 ½ bags of the chemical pest control at $8.49 for a total cost of; $46.70 to get the same coverage as the $9.95 bag of organic control. Not to mention it is delivered to your door saving you about $4 per gallon of gas to go to the store to get it, where you will purchase other things on impulse - costing you even more. (No I don’t have that problem…not at all – a friend of mine does…)

Oh yes! We were cleaning out the dead butter cups. Pull up all the decaying leaves and deposit them in your compost pile. Where you removed the dead leaves and around other plants snails love to eat; like Hostas; sprinkle the snail killer about.

If you use the chemical stuff, expect to see a few dead birds, ‘cause they will eat it. Maybe your puppy too.