Sunday, October 5, 2008

Bog chooks and slug deterrents

One day into my new self imposed rule about only using the internet after I've 'done' my reading in the evenings and I'm on the net at 8am. Spontaneous need to record my latest chook challenges.

Our entire back lawn and garden is a bog. The rain has been relentless and will last for a while yet. It could even be mostly wet all the way until January. So even though we've got a covered chook run, the saturation of the soil is such that rain seems to be seeping downhill and there are puddles even under cover. euggh.

We will move the chook run to a higher spot on the section at some point but even that will only help a bit compared to the enormous rainfall. At least the coop part is raised off the ground and has a wooden floor.

Hard to tell whether the eggshells are helping with the slugs. The blackbirds keep fossicking in the soil and making a huge mess as they go. So they've made craters beside the lettuces and moved the eggshells aside in the process. One lettuce has been partially eaten but at least not razed to the ground. So now I've tried another idea I read of recently and put orange peel around the lettuces. Apparently slugs don't like orange peel. We'll see.

2 comments:

Nik said...

Hmmm, trying to come up with some other ideas for you, but nothing sorry. We had to move ours on this morning too after a heap of rain over the past few days which had turned their run into mud. I'm hoping that we don't have to do that too often though since they are now in one of only two remaining patches until the garden can be harvested! xx

Anonymous said...

Wood chips on the floor of the run may help. Failing that, the only other alternative I can see is to put concrete slabs down first, then a thick layer of wood chips. Not bark chips though.

Tania