Nettles, Nasturtiums and Snails.

Last night I took my neighbors a tomato, and they were so pleased they invited me out back to see their urban garden. They had made excellent use of every available spot. Their tomatoes are just starting to fruit so they were happy to get a ripe one from me. Their garden was so tidy and lovely, not at all like my jungle, even though our yard layouts are identical. When I mentioned my problems with snails, they told me in a rather confusing discussion in broken English and Romanian that they use nettle spray to repel the snails.  They get the nettles from a park, boil it in water to make a soup, then spray it on the plants.
While researching that on the Internet, I came across this site on companion planting. While it didn't say much on the nettle thing, the bit about nasturtiums has me inspired to plant nasturtiums all around my tomatoes. I had nasturtiums all around them before from volunteer seedlings, but they got dug up with the weeds and grass we had to discard to plant the new tomato sets. I have a few left in the other flower bed, and the hummingbirds have been feeding from them. I want to make some nasturtium salad too. I keep reading that you can eat them but I never remember to try it.

Bye Bye Jasmine Vine

Yesterday I girded my loins and tackled the root of that jasmine vine. I soaked it a good 20 minutes and then took a clipper and shovel to what was left of it. I got a good bit of it cleared away and filled  3/4 of the dumpster with vines and branches. I'm still not done with the big clean up but at least now I can see the light at the end of the tunnel.

There was a ripe tomato with a little slug fest going on, so I cut off the bad part and put the rest in a salad and it tasted great. No point wasting a good tomato just because a bug got there first.

Tomato Vine

 

Cilantro / Coriander

I reseeded the cilantro. As you can see in the photos, it's at the end of it's lifespan. 
The radishes are getting bigger. So far so good. I'm still tossing out a lot of snails, trying to race them to my prime plants. I'm also seeing a lot of earthworms, which is a good thing. I just wish I had a compost pile. Stupid tiny yards...mutter, mutter, mutter. I need a quarter of an acre.

Odd Snail Factoid

Today I needed to spray a little wooden sign outdoors so I set the sign on a metal can that still had a paper label. I was spraying the 2nd coat when I noticed a snail clinging to the side of the can. I swear it wasn't there when I set the can down earlier. And right under the snail, in the shape of the part clinging to the can the label had been eaten away. There were 2 other holes in the paper the same size. I thought that was so odd that the snail ate the paper. My boyfriend said, "Why not? The paper is cellulose."
By the way, the polyurethane was dissolving the snail's body. Ewww. Little bubbles were coming out.

Rabbits, Snails and Beets Oh My

I took some of the fresh beets from my garden over to my new friend's house. The four of us made dinner all at the same time, something that would have been impossible in my tiny kitchen.

So I brought beans I made in the crock pot overnight. My boyfriend brought all the fixings for chili for the crock pot we gave our friends, and I also brought the beets from the garden.

My friend made corn bread, a giant salad, and a German chocolate cake.

They have a giant yard and put in a garden. Unfortunately the rabbits are eating it bare. So though my city garden may be tiny, at least there are no rabbits. I could live without the snails though. We are hang picking them out and tossing them at the moment. I've never seen so many snails.

It was so hot today. I'm glad it's cooling down a bit right now.

Snails

On Sunday I bought and planted 4 out of 6 of the plants that were in little peat pots. Then on Monday morning, I saw that snails had totally eaten the top off of one of the two remaining plants. The next morning, I saw they'd destroyed the other one too. Little varmits. Grrrr. I put what was left of them in a covered terrarium. I have little hope that they'll recover without any leaves but at least I can try. One was the Anaheim pepper my boyfriend was so happy to find. It was the only plant he picked out. So I'll have to see if I can get another one next week. I'll be gone all weekend so I won't be able to fix it till next week anyway.

As for the snails, the beer in a dish didn't work at all so I'm back to using Deadline. Don't yell at me...it's no garden if the snails eat it all.