On Slug Patrol and "The Kings Speech"

Well, I am beginning to see a lot of slug damage on the kale and collard seedlings I have put into my garden that should be able to produce veggies for me as we move slowly out of this very cold winter and the day's light is increasing. They are going into sunny locations but they are being eaten alive. After going to see "The King's Speech" at the Rio Theater this evening, I returned home and between 9 and 10 p.m., I went out to search for slugs. And boy did I find them! I used a large flashlight and I checked the seedlings one by one and the surrounding soil. I estimate that I harvested somewhere between 15 and 20 slugs. Some were real babies and some were about an inch long. I threw quite a few into a blackberry patch in a field next to my property, but then I decided to destroy the next batch I found by killing them. I got a blue bucket, put in some very hot water and a bit of salt. This group was drowned, cooked, and salted. I will empty the bucket into the road in the morning.

I have been using oat bran and ashes from my wood burning stove but these appear to be only slowing them down and a few of the slugs I found seemed to be really rolling in the oat bran like they had come upon a feast and were thanking the garden idiot who had added to their diet. The ashes are a bust too. No slugs appeared to be stuck or dying on that. Also, aromatic herbs do not appear to be working, I scattered small pieces of rosemary around the seedlings and I even went so far as to stick some rosemary cuttings up into the seedlings. Lo and behold I even found some slugs on the rosemary using it as a "ladder" to get higher into the seedling to dine on those top yummy leaves. Aargh!!! Finally, forget blackberry or bramble cuttings. I scattered some of those around the seedlings too - the idea being that the slugs will cut themselves to death on the them. Even the edges of the blackberry leaves have little stickers. I had covered one bramble leaf with oat bran and there was a slug on a leaf - a tablecloth - having his oat bran steak dinner! I just hope that the ones I threw into the blackberry patch do not make their way back to my seedlings. They are all going into a bucket of salt water from now on and I will be checking nightly for the next two weeks to break their breeding cycle.

Could it be that seeing "The King's Speech" spurred me on to find my gardening voice, to stop stammering around with these little critters and to stand up and be the king in my own castle, I mean, garden?