Dog Vomit, Slugs, and Roses. Caca de Luna - Cooked on the stove

Our landscaper neighbor looked at some yellowish foam on his mulch and said, "What's that?" I said, "Dog vomit." Sassy was nearby. After some cussing he normally reserved for moles, he said, "Why didn't you tell me?"

I said, "Not from a dog. That is a dog vomit slime mold that forms on wood mulch." I had a larger patch of my own - the next day. Everything is food for something else.

Dog Vomit Slime Mold
Fuligo septica is one of the most common of more than 700 species of slime molds. When we see it, it is  a creeping mass called the plasmodium. This is basically one huge cell, a membrane filled with many nuclei. Moving very slowly, like an amoeba, it creeps around feeding itself. Dog Vomit Slime Mold consumes fungi and bacteria found on decaying plant matter. This is actually good for your garden, a necessary part of the cycle of life. Remember the movie, The Blob? The monster in the movie was based on the plasmodium phase of a slime mold.

Caca de Luna - excrement of the moon,
is cooked and eaten in Venuzuela.

Tiger slugs follow their own slimy trails,
but so do beetles, like our WWII planes that followed bombers
back to their bases, to attack them there.

Free Beer for Slugs
I hosted a beer party for slugs near the tomatoes and came inside with a huge one on my t-shirt. The tiger slug was a monster. I was perplexed about how he got onto the front of my shirt in a short time. They do travel a lot at night.

He might have dropped down from a branch or I brushed against a plant where he was feeding.

I checked the bowl the next day and found some small slugs. I left it alone for a day or two and found another giant slug in the bottom.

Tomatoes
I thought one mature tomato plant was being eaten by slugs, which rasp away at fresh vegetation, so I place the beer bowl there. More likely the plant was suffering from one of the many maladies of tomatoes. The plant is still producing and looking a bit wilted.

The other two mature tomato plants are cranking out green tomatoes fast. As soon as the fruits get some color I put them in a bag with a banana in it. An apple or two will also work. The gas, which apples and bananas give off, speed ripening better than sunlight.

Fragrant Hybrid Tea Roses Blooming Whilst KnockOuts Take a Break

I often come in from the garden wearing some bugs. That is one of the burdens of being the St. Francis of gardening. I checked on the backyard, filled the birdfeeders, dumped rainwater on the White Profusion Butterfly Bush, and checked various growths of weeds and plants. The elderberries are rising 8 feet, blooming, and starting to fruit.

Blackberries bloomed already and began to fruit a little while ago. Now the nubbins are turning from green to black as they build sugar from the sunlight and soil minerals.

I chopped back the KnockOut roses so they could bloom again. They are eager to grow fast and bud.

The hybrid tea roses are far more languid, taking their time to bud and blossom, which they are doing for the first or second time now. The Falling in Love roses were all new this year, so took some time to leaf out. Now they are budding and blooming, so we had a bunch for the chiro.

Today we had some great Fragrant Cloud roses and new Falling in Love blooms.

Fragrant Cloud is high ranking as for its rose perfume
but also attractive and distinctive in its color.

Falling in Love has a white and pink coloring
that makes it seem to glow in the garden and the vase.

Saucy Squirrel Takes a Peek. Slug Wars Escalate with Copper Tape

Squirrels cannot be startled away from the window.
This one liked to feed in Bella Vista, so the view from the bedroom window
is the ravine and the highway down below Walton's Mountain.

Today I was feeding the birds and squirrels with their usual allotment. The squirrels take off when I come outside, especially the one who was chewing into the seed supply. I bought a metal pail for him. He will have his quota for zinc long before he reaches any food.

So - the squirrels scattered and I put some seed into the hanging platform shared by the birds and squirrels. As I was filling it, I saw a squirrel peeking around the corner. He had not run away, just out of eyesight. Perched around the corner, he was able to look around and watch me. He seemed to be very happy at the sight of a free meal.

I found peanut flavored suet the birds might like
and used a feeder just like this one.
The suet was gone in days.
I am rounding up the usual suspects.

Slug Wars Escalate with Copper Tape

We have 10 days of rain predicted, so diotomaceous earth with not work and slugs will multiply. Mrs. I asked, "What about the beer?"

Beer is going to be watered down with so much rain, so I wanted a long term solution. Slugs supposedly cannot cross copper, because it set off the electrical charge in their bodies, which is revolting for them.

I fashioned three pieces of cardboard with copper taped around the hole for the three vulnerable and slug-chewed plants. For one I taped both sides of the hole in the cardboard collar.

This website calls copper versus slugs a gardening myth, but allows that copper may be a deterrent.

To add to the deterrent, I have already planned to crush more clay from a pot or two. I join the garden myth guy in questioning egg shells.

The previous beer party has reduced the visible slug population.

The most important Butterfly Bush has a new lease on life from diotomaceous earth, egg shells,  and clay shards around it. Maybe it is the placebo effect - it just needed attention.

The two Passion Vines have stayed green but remain chewed with no new leaves.

Upside Down Pot for Mr. Spider
I like to try out ideas, and Sharon Lovejoy has plenty of them. I know she is not one to copy dumb ideas but try them out and share them. Her ideas was turn a clay pot  upside down as long as there is a drainage hole on top. Check. I had several small ones ideal for that.

She said a spider would take up residence, and curious insects would come inside for a meal - the spider's. I tried that and looked inside the pot near the Passion Vines several days later. I saw a spider, a web, and an insect hanging in the web.

There are many kinds of shelter that add to the diversity of the yard:

1. Half pots as shelters for toads.
2. Logs that feed the soil and shelter various animals, including toads, promoting soil fertility as the wood rots.
3. Piles of sticks, because any kind of shelter or perch invites insects.
4. Dead leaves, since beetles and other creatures enjoy the shelter, moisture, and food possibilities.
5. Bushes are havens for birds and insects.
6. Living trees are loved by birds, but so are dead trees.

Beer Party at the Jackson Rose Farm

You worked hard last night, slug family.
Have a beer.

I told our nearby nursery owner that we passed the rose gardens label at some point. Now we are a rose farm. He laughed.

Last night I bought a six-pack of beer and hosted a beer party - for slugs. I had an overwhelming response from two nights of beer in the sunny - aka straw bale garden. I noticed last night that the army of slugs was down to one or two obvious stragglers.

My earlier effort near the two struggling Passion Flower vines was successful for two nights, so I threw a new party there, plus one near my barely present Butterfly Bush - the only one barely above the soil.

One more pan was put near the kitchen door, and I realize the little patio was filled with damp slug food, leaves and organic debris, kept wet by my watering. No wonder they come inside each night - to thank me. That beer pan yielded very little, unless some creature ate from it.

This party cost me $2 in beer for the two bottles. Next I will place a circle or square of copper tape around the vulnerable plants. The slugs have an electrical charge, so they cannot pass across the copper barrier, not unlike the rich man who neglected Lazarus.

The organic remedies are:

• Let them drown themselves in a bowl or pan of beer.
• Surround the target plants with copper mesh or tape.
• Tap a little salt on the outliers.
• Be extra solicitous for the comfort, shelter, and hydration of toads. Ducks, toads, and starlings eat slugs.

Borage flowers are pink and blue,
dropping seed all the time.

Borage is fun to eat off the plant.

This wide view shows how borage looks like its cousin comfrey (knitbone),
another eager grower. Knitbone is often grown for the compost pile.

This Just In - Bloom

1. The borage, a great bee plant, is waist high and blooming like crazy. The flowers are herbal and good for eating and garnish salads. More borage plants are around the yard, as suggested by Sharon Lovejoy.
2. Buchwheat, another bee plant is blooming all over. I sowed it here and there near the soaker hose.
3. Roses are blooming well. The new buds on the magenta KnockOuts have 25 buds on one bush. Peace, John Paul II, Veterans Honor, Barbra Streisand, Falling in Love, Double Delight, and Mr Lincoln are blooming. 
4. Peas are still being harvested. Tomatoes have just started.
5. Pumpkins finally emerged in the heat.
6. Coreopsis - a great beneficial insect plant - bloomed a few minutes after planting.
7. Two bee balm plants are blooming.
8. Lavender continues to bloom after planting.

Bee Balm has many names, including Horse Mint,
and many of God's creatures love it -
bees, hummingbirds, and butterflies.

Slugs Served Coors Beer. Calladiums are Sweethearts.

One reader wondered how I happened upon beer in the house. My wife and I are not beer drinkers, but there it was, in a cupboard we do not use much.

Many recommend a bowl of beer for slugs. I knew we had plenty from the spring rains - creeks and rivers at flood stage - and a midnight look at their work.

Last night I re-purposed the small roasting pan (birdbath) we dug up from the backyard. I filled the pan with beer and set it out in the straw bale area. At 5 AM I had about 15 slugs in the pan and more crawling to get in.

Some other cures are:

1. Grapefruit halves left upside down - they attract slugs and provide a false shelter for the slugs.
2. Copper mesh or strips will set up an electrical charge that kills slugs.
3. Garlic spray repels them.
4. A board or any other temporary hiding place will gather them for disposal in the morning - dropping them into a solution that solves the problem.
5. Toads, ducks, and garter snakes. I have seen two of the toads that live at the Jackson Rose Gardens. Clay pot shelters and logs are good for their homes. Flat pans filled with water give them the hydration they need.

New Rose Garden Mulched

Before the weather got really hot and humid, our helper came over to mow one day and mulch the next. We put down newspapers around the maple tree base and covered the area with cyprus mulch. I had thick patches of grassy weeds that are now feeding the soil and compost now.

We planted garlic around the maple tree last fall, so that will be encouraged to grow and multiply - the best all around treatment for roses. Garlic will drive away pests, including slugs, and make the roses healthier. 

I planted Sweetheart calladium bulbs in the early spring and never saw a sign of them. Now they are growing up through the mulch under the crepe myrtle and unfurling their colorful leaves.

Slugs at Midnight - A Garden Helper We Can Dig.

When this is a minor problem, few think about slugs,
but a wet season can really leverage slug populations and hunger.

Readers tell me that they see things for the first time after they read about it on the blog. They are not alone. I do some research for each post, so I keep learning more about gardening.

Once I identified "grassshopper damage" as slug damage, I did more research of slug abatement. Last year they were a minor annoyance but this year they are chewing on newly purchases plants.

I saw egg shells as a possible help - and they are free. I used them several days. Then I put clay shards around one plant. Pot shards are sharper and more permanent.

At Lowe's for another load of mulch - for the new rose garden - I bought a bag of diatomaceous earth. The microscopic creatures have a silica shell around them that remains after death. This was discovered in Germany about 1836.

Enormous piles of diatomaceous earth (DE) have been found in various places, which sounds a lot like deposits from the Genesis Flood. There are many uses for DE, including pest destruction, so DE is mined, used in food products, and even used as a health product when it is food grade.

God so designed many creatures so that any nick to their outside will kill them. Crawling insects and slugs share that vulnerability.

I powdered the welcome area in front of the back door
and no slugs came in last night.

Understanding Slugs
Slugs are creatures of rot, so they thrive with moisture. They also need darkness, so they  work at night. Our recent rains have multiplied our slug population. One website suggested visiting the garden in the dark, to see the slugs at work.

Everyone calm down. A massive slug attack in the dark will not reach its target's location until several days later.

I went outside late a night with a flashlight and the bag of diatomaceous earth. I was especially interested in the potatoes growing in the rotting straw bales - watered regularly. As Kenda says on his TV show, "Now they have my attention."

The straw bale and the wood mulch were populated with big, striped slugs, so I powdered them and the area with DE.

Rain or watering will eliminate the efficacy of DE. I am making clay pot shards for the important areas. The ceramic pieces will remain sharp and in place all summer.

DE does not attract slugs, so these creatures must come in contact to meet their doom.

Slugs seem to like beer and drown in it, but I doubt whether beer traps are feasible when slugs are a genuine problem.

Poisoned slug bait is counter-productive, because  those toxins also kill beneficial creatures.

Spinach and other leafy vegetables are tempting to slugs.
The spineless cowards, who only work at night, do not attack the stronger plants.

Toads love slugs.

Clay pots are handy as toad shelters and shards to stop slugs.

The re-taking of Toad Hall by Toad
and his allies.

Roses Arrived and Now Circle the Maple Tree. Going Postal on the Slugs

Paradise rose.

The bargain roses for Father's Day came, ten in a surprisingly compact box. The box was quite warm, which may explain why roses are so beat up and dried out when they arrive.

They came via Gurney's from Weeks Roses, a wholesaler. This time I received two of each, one in each pair a very large and well developed plant. In the last shipment, all 10 were very large, more than any of the other companies'.

The first shipment has burst into so much color, so prolifically, that I decided to get more for Father's Day. Our initial agreement was just out the back door, where I had soft soil and mulch. But no, Chris had a better idea this morning.

"Why don't you put them around the maple tree out front?" I said with muted cheerfulness, "Sure." In movies, that is when the sound track starts sound like "wree, wree, wreee, wree" or someone begins chanting in Latin.

Bride's Dream rose.

I knew digging among maple tree roots would be a major challenge, especially since they had been dreadful close to the house.

Experts suggest avoiding maple trees, but there it is, pruned back by our landscaper friend, who loved creating a mountain of branches, logs, twigs, and leaves. The objection of "not enough sun" is met by the bottle brush look of the maple tree. Secondly, I planted as far away from the trunk as I could manage.

Tuscan Sun rose.

The first hole dug was fairly easy and the second one started well - "wree, wree, wree, wree." I hit a block of interconnected roots that were the size of a small loaf of bread. I shoveled, sawed, pried, hammered, and finally dislodged the entire lump.

Meanwhile, I was checking the labels on the roses as I fished them out of the rainwater barrel. They had a long soak and stayed there until the next two holes were dug each time.

I always wanted to grow Europeana, and now I had two of these floribundas to add color to the front yard. The other batch  is mostly floribunda, and I really like the sprays of flowers they produce. So does everyone else.

The others are just as promising, all hybrid teas. I used the shovel to measure distance and 10 fit around the tree just right. Mrs. Ichabod said, "I told you."

Europeana rose has been one of the top floribundas for years.

Hybrid teas are the favorites for vases, but floribundas make good bouquets, too.  So far the floribundas have not had the same staying power when cut. but there are plenty to harvest daily, and this is their first year.

Slugs - Use Egg Shells, Clay Shards, or Diotomaceous Earth

Slug control

Slugs are sensitive to having any kind of cut or abrasion. Some suggest egg shells as free treatment for slugs. I used some clay pot shards around one plant. But I saw more slug damage around younger plants, so I bought a bag of diatomaceous earth.

As the link suggests, watering early in the day is one control. This area is so soggy that we have a flood watch with no rain. The waterways are so full that we could still have flash flooding. Therefore, slugs are well watered and plenty hungry.

On the good side, observing the Eighth Commandment, slugs are mostly underground, where they are moving bags of water. They can cocoon themselves during a dry spell too, so they contribute to the overall moisture of the soil, but locking up water, just as mulch, earthworms, soil creatures do.

The Supposed Chief Article That Dares Not Speak Its Name

Ten little Stormtroopers jumping on my head,
One fell off the wagon, and he's pronounced dead.

UOJ - Justification without Faith - is the Chief Article of the Christian religion. The master and prince..." -
various LCMS-ELS-WELS leaders.

Someone started another anonymous blog - doubtless a "confessional" Lutheran blog. He or she is quoting the Large Catechism - anonymously. The anonymous introduction says very little, perhaps forgetting that the leaders of the Reformation did not hide away or duck issues, working only in the dark. These newly anointed martyrs and confessors claim that hiding away is a virtue, and the right way to do things. As one tried to say maladroitly, "Thank God I am not a blogger, like Ichabod."

When Wittenberg was under siege, Luther risked his life to come back and preach a series of sermons, exposing himself to capture and a long, slow torturous burning at the stake. These foxes and weathervanes will not risk an appointment to the summer camp committee, lest they lose some mileage money or a free lunch at some fancy bistro.

During the great Missouri Croquet Match, when everyone pretended to be Martin Luther yet suffered little more than some discomfort, the leaders used their own names and published. Nothing was really settled, except the biggest liars went off to form the AELC, which became the gay quota template of ELCA. The Seminexers, many from WELS, made sure they were over-represented and sent their faculty to the Lutheran School of Theology to bankrupt it. Good riddance to both. They even donated their own gay seminary professor, Deppe (former LCMS) who moved on to the UCC, leaving his wife and children behind. That should sound familiar to Missouri idolators. And WELS' own Richard Jungkuntz moved on up to the ALC, where the activist for the Lavender Mafia pronounced himself "old school."

Like the UOJ Stormtroopers,
slugs are bisexual.

As this current debacle unfolds, UOJ has turned into a slug that no longer inches along to leave  its slime on everything. As gardeners know, a slug responds to touch by pretending to be dead. The little antennae withdraw. The little gastropod feet disappear. The familiar profile transforms itself into a lifeless blob. The only way to bring the slug back to life quickly is to introduce it to some irritant like salt, which will make the true slug appear again as it dies, silently and hideouslessly.

The UOJ slugs have abandoned Romans 4 faster than Nixon abandoned Agnew. Nostalgics remember how UOJists used to write "raised for our justification - Romans 4:25!" as proof for their heinous dogma. . But that was only part of a verse. When Romans 4:24 was added, in the context of Chapte 4 showing Abraham to have been justified by faith, they curled up and played dead.

They used to mention Calov with reverence, which was handy, since Lutherans read Calov even less than Calov. One might as well quote the Constitution to Congress or the Scriptures to a synod president. As the graphic above shows, Calov eviscerated the UOJ slug in one comment.

But - let us return to the Bible. Another symptom of their Tourette's Syndrome is shouting "Behold the Lamb of God, who bears the sin of the world" or simply "John 1:29!" There is no connection between their Halle rationalism and this verse, and even less harmony with Luther's description of the Gospel of John.

John teaches mainly the sublime and chief article of our Christian faith: believing in Christ. Because of this article we are called Christians. Besides this, we do not find many sermons on the Ten Commandments in this Gospel. Rather it is his greatest task to establish well the sublime article of the righteousness of faith and to impress it deeply on the people. For there is no danger when this article remains pure and unadulterated and stands firmly. But when it is overthrown, we are lost and are no better than Jews, heathen, Tartars, and Turks, aye, we are as bad as the papists. For this reason, because he so diligently teaches this chief article, the evangelist John deserves to be highly praised.
What Luther Says, ed. Plass, 3 vols, II, p. 702. W 33, 82. E 57, 298. SL 7, 2252.

The UOJ leaders have this advantage - their clergy read Luther and the Confessions as little as they do. But the laity are another matter. The laity do not have the filter of synodical dogma, which fogs every article of faith.

The more we draw out the UOJ slugs, the more vulnerable they are. They live on moist rot in the darkness. They can travel in the light, but that is where they become obvious, like that ugly gastropod inching across the kitchen floor.

In the future there will no attempts to deal with justification by faith directly. Instead, the synodical talking points will be delivered with great pretensions of piety among themselves and large volumes of verbal abuse for those who appear to be threats.