"Acceptable Level of Damage"

Acceptable Damage

Cindy is preparing a presentation for the new Master Gardeners' class on vegetable garden pests, so she asked me to shoot some pictures of slug damage to our potato plants, demonstrating a level of minor, acceptable damage, and another shot of more extensive and unacceptable slug damage.

Unacceptable Slug Damage

The damage to these plants was caused by common garden slugs.  Cindy had surrounded the potato plants growing in these fabric bags with plastic garden fencing, but the slugs had no trouble getting through the fencing to munch on the plant leaves to their hearts' content.

Totally Unacceptable Squirrel Damage

On second thought, do slugs have hearts?  Time to get out the Sluggo.

After I shot the pictures, Cindy continued to work in the garden, so she left the fencing off the plants for a few hours.

Between 2 p.m. and 5 p.m, when she went back out to the garden, some varmint did far more damage to the potato plants than the slugs had done by stripping whole branches of leaves.

Prime Suspect

We know it was the squirrels because this morning Cindy saw one of them hop up onto the edge of the raised bed and start pawing at the fencing she had reinstalled after she discovered the damage yesterday afternoon.

I guess he wanted some greenery to go with all the birdseed he's been snarfing down lately, but we were stunned by the amount of damage he managed to do to the plants in such a short time.

One thing for sure, we won't be putting out any beer to control the slugs:  who knows how much damage a pack of drunken squirrels could do to the garden.