We have a garden. Not a very good one, I'll admit. It's covered in weeds and this year all we did was plant a couple tomato and sweet pepper starts, then let our strawberry plants and green onions grow again from last year.
But we seem to be bearing fruit. In fact, we usually get a bowl or so of strawberries each time we make the trek out to the weed-filled garden. Sometimes our strawberries are nibbled on. We found out recently that roly polies (or as most of you call them, potato bugs) have been the culprits. And I don't know what to do with them. But I figured out a way to get rid of our snails, who also happen to find strawberries delectable.
You see, Bianca loves bugs and critters of all kinds. And when I'm weeding (yes, I do try but I never seem to get very far), I call out to Bianca that I found a snail. She comes running. She's already named an entire family of snails--There's Sally, the mother; Stan, the father; then there's Sonya, Sam, and Sara. Just to name a few. We recycle the names each year. Sally appears to come back each year, along with the entire family.
But playing with the snails is somehow eliminating them. Bianca takes the snails and creates fun little snail camps on Bug Mountain, which is a big rock used in the landscaping in our neighbor's yard. Then she builds slides out of sticks and obstacle courses with smaller rocks. There are leaves for tents. It goes on and on. She even tried to organize a snail "day care" for the baby and toddler snails.
The weird thing is, she doesn't take them that far. But everytime we return to "bug mountain", it's littered with snail shells. Somehow the snails died. I don't know how or why this happens--maybe the salt from her hands, is that possible?--but it does. And it keeps our snail population down. Seems humane enough to me. At least no one's stomping onto the snail's shell or sprinkling salt on them.
I don't know what I'm going to do about the roly poly population though. I let Bianca play with them too, but it doesn't seem to kill them. Any ideas?
