California Storm! WOWEEEE!!!

12:20 a.m. this morning a blast not unlike I would expect to hear next door with miners doing blasting! And the storm stayed here for the rest of the night. I heard thunder and saw light at 4:30 a.m. There was hail downtown. Intermittent heavy to light rain here. Thunder and lightening all night long. Here's a link to the sparse newspaper info this morning. http://www.fresnobee.com/updates/story/1317958.html

UNBELIEVABLE!!!

With gratitude to our Coastal Folks,
Linda

Huh...business as usual down here.....promise of rain, I see that the street is damp, but couln't have been more than a misting. Lucky you.....

We had some rain here, but nothing quite that exciting!

I can see a few white clouds peaking over the hill from the coast, but otherwise, what Sherry said. :-(

We had 0.52 inches here in Sacramento yesterday. Great for the garden - can leave my sprinkler system off for another week and a half!

Nothing to cheer about here, some rain, some shine...
My roses are happy with the rain!

CC

I was all smug in the sunshine and wish I hadn't watered the night before the rain began. But now I won't need to water for a little while! My sprinklers will remain off for a bit but the grass will green up on the back lawn.. yay for that! I was just thinking 3 days ago I would need to run the sprinklers.

I'm missing the sunshine, but I know we really really needed some rain.

Told you it would miss me. DH ran into some last night on his way home. Not a single drop here. Just clouds, cold, wind and dust.
Starting to dry out here, sigh.
WIB,
SW

I was just getting a handle on all the weeds...now the rain will have them popping up all over again. My aching back...gotta love it.:-)

Weeds are not so much of a problem for me as the slugs and snails. Everywhere I turn, there they are. The snails I can pick (the morning after a rainstorm is a great time for a snail hunting expedition) but the slugs, they are small and slimy and impossible to kill. I do bait some, but wish there was another way.

The weeds. Ugh. We'd just taken care of a barrel full (or 3).
The slugs are my problem too. I find some late at night just outside the door when I am doing laundry in the garage, but otherwise....

The snails are ALL OVER but that's because I haven't unleashed the kids on them yet. I pay 5cents per snail and we dump them in the brown bin so they're carted away... I even pay the neighbor kids to ferret them out of the plants.

For the slugs you can use products with iron phosphate rather than metaldehyde as the active--those are much safer but will still kill the slugs. Or if you put copper barriers around your plants they won't cross those. Or I think people have posted that diatomaceous earth works on them as well--sprinkle a border of it around your plants and if they crawl over it they'll be sorry! Or take the approach my dad used for our strawberry patch when we were kids...put out a little dish of beer and they'll crawl into it and get drunk and drown.

And if you use the copper, remember to clean it off periodically. :-)

Is it too late to put out pre-emergent weed stuff? I know the majority of the weeds have already emerged but we are expecting a beautiful weekend after all that rain and I'm sure those weeds will just be loving it.

As long as you don't disturb the ground after you spread it. IOW, if you still have weeds growing in that area that you have to pull, etc., don't bother. If you have a clean area that will be left alone, it will work if it gets watered in good.

This is how I understand the process - if I'm wrong, somebody speak now! LOL

I don't think it's too late--I still see some new weeds sprouting and since we're having some rain I expect there'll be a few more. You're definitely better off applying it earlier in the season but it certainly won't hurt to put some more down now.

"Sluggo" is still the best snail and slug killer, IMO.
If you're going to use a pre-emergent weed killer, remember that it will kill seeds of desireable plants as well as weeds...so if you have things growing that reseed themselves, those will get wiped out as well.

The Sluggo I know of has iron phosphate as the active--is that the one you're talking about or do they have a different one?

same one. They also make SluggoPlus which kills sowbugs and earwigs in addition to snails and slugs. The sluhho Plus has an added ingredient called Spinosad in it, in addition to iron phosphate.

In both products, 98% of the content is inert ingredients.

I was just on a thread that used coffee sprayed and coffee ground to discourage slugs. It was a DG Thread. We did not receive anything except wind. I still have my chest cold so I do not really give a Easter Bunny. Happy Easter All My Gardening Friends....

Day three of on and off rain. Too wet to go out to hand pick snails LoL. All this rain is wrecking havoc on my tree peony blooms - they all look kind of sad and droopy now. But, I am thankful that the rains came after the cherry blossoms were out for at least a week. I can see some small baby cherries developing. That was not the case when the nectarine tree was blooming - the rains came about three days after flowering. Knocked almost all the flowers to the ground. Keeping my fingers crossed that I will get some fruit. I have great empathy for the farmers whose livelihood is so dependent on Mother nature.

I have used sluggo in the past - I normally add the coffee grind to my compost pile, but maybe I will spread some just over the soil and see.

Thanks for all the info.

Fortunately, or unfortunately, I don't have any desirable seeds where the weeds are taking over. Someday perhaps but not at the moment. My 'garden' is definitely in its infancy.

We got just a blow-through of rain night before last. I'll still have to water tomorrow as usual. Everything got growing so fast there for a while when it warmed up - can't wait to see what happens once the heat is here again for good!

Slugs? Table salt kills them, and you don't need that much, just coat the slug. My sister and I used to go around with the salt shaker as children on spring mornings. In the Pacific Northwest we had tons of slugs including the 6-7 inch long banana slug. I'll tell you, if you accidentally walked on one it was just like the old banana peel shtick - you'd slide off your feet and often land in the goo. EW!

EW ! is right about those gigantic slugs. There's nothing more repulsive than one of those things. LOL

When I was a kid, we had a snail invasion after a really heavy rainy season. A man at my dad's work raised ducks, so he brought over about 6 of them and turned them loose in our backyard. They had a feeding frenzy and the problem was solved.

I was facinated by watching them.

Good to know about the Sluggo Plus, JD. I'll get that the next time I buy some - we have earwigs all over and I hate those things.

The Sluggo Plus comes in a different container than the regular Sluggo. Here is a photo of both. This is the only size of Sluggo Plus I've ever seen.

I don't remember where I got the Sluggo Plus...possibly Green Thumb Nursery...I don't normally see it in stores that sell the regular Sluggo, so it might be better to call around first, to see who carries it.

Oddly enough, I never had an earwig issue (that I know of anyway...) until I started using regular Sluggo...then all of a sudden, the snails and slugs were gone, but I had a ton of earwigs...go figure. LOL

I was bitten by one recently and the suckers hurt! The other thing I hate is some are stuck between the panes on my greenhouse, so I see them all the time. Yuck!

Edited to add: I get regular Sluggo in the big plastic bottle, too. I just wait for it to be on special at the local farm/garden supply.

This message was edited Apr 10, 2009 9:00 AM

I've had GREAT luck with the Sluggo Plus. I used it only in one bed where I was having a lot of problems with munching on plants, but no slime trails. It's been ~2 weeks, and leaves on those plants are now whole and healthy. I've tried trapping earwigs and sowbugs, but it's just not something I can manage to keep up with. Supposedly the additional ingredient in the Sluggo Plus is another naturally-occurring chemical from soil, so I don't have to feel guilty about using it, either.

Yesterday I went out to the greenhouse and when I tried to open the door, earwigs started falling all over the place. They were jammed into the track the door slides on! It's an invasion! Have to do something about them quick. Any ideas?

We finally got some of that blessed rain last night. At least I don't have to water today and I'm sure the plants prefer it. :-)

Vacuum & dump/drown them in water with some olive oil in it?

Do you have any diatomaceous earth ? Try sprinkling that around the base of the track and the perimeter of the greenhouse. They tend to hide under places like where wood meets soil.

Don't know if I can get power up there, but I'll mention it to DH. I'm googling, too. Thanks, Ima.

We crossed JD. Don't have any, but will get some!