It has been cold and wet in Portland this spring—perfect slug weather. Slugs mowed down my spinach seedlings, made lacework of my cauliflower leaves, and have nibbled on my radishes. They are a fact of life in the Northwest, but they are thankfully easy to control with Sluggo, an organic iron phosphate bait. You just have to remember to apply it! When slugs ingest Sluggo, it doesn’t poison them, instead it makes them loose their appetite and they die of starvation. It is perhaps not the best way to go, but it is better than being cut in half with scissors, which is how my grandmother dispatches them.

I definitely do not recommend using conventional chemical slug baits, especially ones that contain metaldehyde, which is a dangerous neurotoxin that also happens to be very attractive to small mammals, especially dogs. I found this description of the effect of metaldehyde on slugs on the Great Vista Chemicals website, which touts the benefits of metaldehyde baits, “It doesn’t kill the pest directly but it paralyzes them and causes them to froth and loose large amounts of water.” Lovely. Just the type of product I want to use in my vegetable garden. Or not.

Earlier this week I wrote about my slug problem and several organic ways to control them over at Re-Nest, where I will be writing a weekly gardening advice column called The Gardener. I’ll start posting a link to the column here on Monday after it goes live on Re-Nest so you can follow along, if you like.

Aphids are out in force in my garden right now. I’ve spotted a few on my peas and eggplants, but they are all over Jon’s hops. Aphids feed by sticking their mouthpart into leaves and sucking out plant sap. They are often green, but can also be black, peach, and grey-ish in color. They like to hangout on the underside of leaves. Some have wings, some don’t. Telltale signs that you have an aphid problem include plants with puckered leaves (this is especially noticeable on peas and favas) and the presence of honeydew, a clear, sticky substance that the aphids exude.

These little pests are easy to deal with organically. The first—and often best—option is to just leave them alone. Birds love aphids, I’ve seen sparrows and chickadees swooping in and out of the hops all week snacking on the insect buffet.  Aphids also lure in ladybugs, who along with their larvae, can eat several hundred each day.

Option B is to spray aphids with a strong stream of water. The insects have such soft bodies that a blast from the hose kills them. This method works best on sturdy plants (like hops), but can bruise tender plants (like peas) and knock the petals off flowers (like roses).

Option C is to spray them with an insecticidal soap, such as Safer Soap. These soaps coat the insects and effectively smother them. In order for a soap spray to work, it must come into contact with the aphids. So it is very important to spray the entire affected plant, including the tops and bottoms of its leaves. Thoroughly inspect the plant after a couple of days and use the soap spray again if necessary. I’m usually all for for DIY solutions, but in the case of soap sprays I think it is best to buy one that is formulated for use on plants. Fragrances, dyes, and other ingredients in household soaps can be phytotoxic (i.e. kill plants), so I play it safe and use a commercial insecticidal soap.

Plants that often have issues with aphids include roses, hops, peppers, eggplants, peas, favas, honeysuckle, and nasturtiums.

Meet Gus and Daisy.

They are very adorable goats. They also happen to be hardworking members of the In Harmony Sustainable Landscapes team. In Harmony hired a herd of goats to come and eat their way through the Himalayan blackberry, thistle, bamboo, and bindweed that smothered the lot behind their offices a couple years ago. This was an awesome plan, because the weeds quickly disappeared, no RoundUp required. The only problem? The staff fell in love with Gus and Daisy. They couldn’t bear the thought of parting. So when the rest of the herd from Healing Hooves (a natural vegetation removal service) went home, this pair of cuties stayed behind.

It is, I suppose, a risk you undertake when hiring a herd of goats.

Gus and Daisy now live happily at the In Harmony office. Every morning, their caretaker, Karrie, leads them out of their pen and over to a movable corral where they happily munch to their hearts content on grass and weeds in the back lot. It’s a good life for Gus and Daisy and the folks at In Harmony don’t have to worry about mowing anymore!

If you’d like to get rid of a nasty weed problem, goats just might be the answer. Rent-A-Goat services are popping up all over the country. Here in Washington, you can get in touch with Healing Hooves, Rent-A-Ruminant, and The Goat Lady. Karrie highly recommends using goats to control weeds, but cautions that it is true: they will eat anything. Including plants like rhododendrons, laurel, and pieris, which are bad for them.

Gus and Daisy are so cute, I almost wish I had a huge weed problem in my yard so I could hire some goats! But I think I’ll just stick to visiting them on their home turf from time to time.

I love ground beetles. They are kind of like little living tanks that deploy during the night and lay waste to slug eggs, snails, potato beetles, and cutworms.

There are nearly 2500 different species of ground beetles in North America. Most ground beetles do good work, as evidenced by the common names of some beetle species; my favorites being caterpillar hunter (Calosoma scrutator) and eastern snail eater (Scaphinotus elevatus). If you follow these three simple rules, it is easy enough to encourage them to live in your garden:

Don’t use insecticides. Ever. Insecticides, even organic ones like pyrethrum and rotenone, can kill ground beetles and other beneficial insects, which upsets the predator/prey balance in your garden. Attracting a diverse range of beneficial insects is a much better pest control strategy!

Mulch. Ground beetles like to hideout underneath rocks, leaf litter, and woody debris—so adding a nice layer of wood chips or shredded leaves to ornamental garden beds and pathways provides plenty of habitat.

Plant ground covers. Low growing plants, including edibles like sage, savory, thyme, and strawberries also provide shelter for ground beetles.

The wonderful beetle letterpress note card pictured up top is printed on bamboo paper by Smock—a Syracuse, New York print shop. Today and tomorrow (January 20 and 21) Smock will be donating 100% of the proceeds from their Everyday line (which includes the beetle note cards) to the Doctor’s Without Borders Haiti Relief program. I hope you’ll join me in supporting this benefit by stocking up on gift, thank-you, and note cards.

This summer the lovely Ileana of A Candy-Colored Life sent me a packet of ‘Erbette’ chard seed as part of the Punk Rock Garden Swap. ‘Erbette’ has slender, pale green stems and delicate leaves that remind me more of spinach than Swiss chard. It is an elegant and sophisticated vegetable, just like its name suggests.

Which is why I was devastated to discover that an army of leaf miners decided they like ‘Erbette’ as much as I do. Leaf miners are the larvae of a tiny black fly. They wiggle their way in between the upper and lower leaf surfaces of chard (and other leafy greens), mine out a pocket, and leave ugly blisters all over the leaves.

They are totally gross and I have decided to wage war.

My garden is 100% organic, so I definitely wasn’t about to break out a spray to annihilate these icky pests. I did a little research and found out that the best way to deal with leaf miners is to cut out infested leaves as soon as you notice damage and dispose of them.

I’ve been vigilantly removing infested leaves and so far, so good! The number of leaves affected is diminishing quickly. Next year, I think that I’ll put a row cover over my chard (and spinach) in early summer when the leaf miner flies are out and about laying eggs. The row cover (which is an agricultural fabric that lets light and water in but keeps bugs out) will protect my pretty plants without using a drop of chemicals. Won’t that be nice?

Last Saturday morning Jon and I paid a visit to our friends, Peter and Chloe. On the way there, we picked up a few pastries from Bakery Nouveau (a completely addictive French bakery located just a few blocks from our house), and I brought my camera to document Peter and Chloe’s highly effective and unusual organic weed control: goats!

Like so many gardeners in Seattle (including myself), Peter and Chloe found ivy, Himalayan blackberries, and bindweed creeping over the fence and into their yard. Rather than spend tons of time digging up the beastly plants, or using chemicals, they rented four absolutely adorable goats from the Goat Lady!

For just $25 per goat, Jill (the Goat Lady) dropped the goats off in their backyard for a week. All Peter and Chloe had to do was move the goats around the yard (they are tether-trained) and check on them a few times a day. The goats ate weeds to their hearts’ content, and they also left tons of free fertilizer in their wake!

I particularly liked two of the goats, Sunny, who loved being petted, and Twitch, a small goat with a very sweet face. 

Sunny is a real lover…her heart shaped spot proves it!

Don’t you just want to hug Twitch?