Disheartened

Sometimes gardening can be disheartening. I went outside this beautiful morning to find some of my lovely little seedlings mowed down by evil critters in the night. They didn’t even eat the evidence but just sliced through the stems of tomato and lettuce seedlings, leaving them limp and dead on the surface of the ground.
Slugs and snails come out at night looking for young juicy shoots to eat, and young seedlings are their favourite. So I am on my way to the shops to buy some steel wool and a beer. These are the ingredients for a slug and snail trap I read about. The steel wool is rolled into a long sausage and used to form a protective barrier around the seedlings – as apparently snails and slugs don’t like crawling over metal. Then a yoghurt container with beer in it is a trap to lure and drown them before they devour any more of my seedlings. I will also be going out later to spray my young crop with an organic pesticide concoction I made up a few days ago. If you are interested in the recipe its:
Organic Pesticide Recipe
• Cut up 2 onions, 4 chillies and whole garlic clove.
• Put the ingredients into a large pot and add warm water.
• Leave the mixture to stand overnight.
• Then strain the mixture and add 2 tablespoons of organic dishwashing soap to the mixture. Then pour it into a spray bottle and spray onto your affected plants to keep the bugs away.
You will need to spray them often for best results and definitely after it rains.
Besides this unhappy news, it is a lovely summer day and the rest of the veggies are growing wonderfully. (as you can see from these photos).
Tonight is D-Day for injecting our sheep with their spring dewormer so Grant and Lorenzo will have to tackle them and hold them for their shots. We are also spending some time to bring in some fresh veld grass to lay down for our sheep and chickens to sleep on as the farm yard was cleaned out today.
As you can see, there are always lots to do around here, but we wouldn’t trade it for the world. And it’s the little treats – like dinner tonight - fresh herb omelettes made from your own free range eggs and home grown herbs - that make it all worth it.