Slug Hotels

Worst cabbage year ever. 


I knew the green cabbages looked rough this year and that we had lost a bunch to root maggots, but I was not expecting the damage I discovered this morning.  There wasn't a single cabbage worm to be found (if anything goes wrong, it is usually the presence of worms).  Rather, the cabbages were full of slugs.  Slug hotels.  In my garden.  

Big chunks are chewed out of the bottoms of them.  There are slugs and slug poop 4 and 5 layers in.  It doesn't help that this cabbage variety doesn't have tightly packed leaves.  The wrinkled gaps serve as cool, spacious lounge areas for them.  They certainly looked relaxed, as I was scowling, peeling back layers and flinging the squatters out with my knife. Only two cabbages had anything resembling roots left on them, but the roots were only about 3 or 4 cm long.   Most of the stems gave no resistance at all when I pulled them. In past years, they were so strongly rooted I had to dig the stems and roots out with a shovel or leave them until the following Spring because I couldn't pull them by hand. 

I left four on the step that are past saving.  Four small ones are soaking in a sink of salted water. If I start processing them and they are full of holes and slug poo that needs to be scrubbed out with a toothbrush leaf by leaf, then the whole lot is going in the compost bin. 
  
Arhg.