New kitchen garden lazy (Schiltigheim 67300)

[Did67]

it is the 2ème year that I foine and, slugs side, it's not worse than before when I was gardening bare ground!
I remember horrible years - without hay - where slugs ate even onions and shallots !!!
hence my habit of sowing more than necessary and transplant gradually not to eat all my plants at the beginning, there is always a time when they decline and then the seedlings have time to strengthen , grow up and no longer interest them because probably less tender

1) Part of the problem is that often people switch over to conventional gardening (tillage, bare soil ... and “slug” type metaldehyde, the efficiency of which can be seen !!!) to an "ecological" gardening, with ground cover and metaldehyde prohibited!

They attribute to the cover all the effects observed (including those of the suppression of the anti-slug!). It is in any case, one of the big obstacles in promoting our way of gardening !!

2) Yes, the problem is more complex. There are different species of slugs. The little black girls attack underground. They "dug" me, at ground level, melon stalks in the way that wireworm larvae dig lettuce roots underground for me ...

Nonetheless, I would be inclined to think that hay (and any similar thick cover - straw, etc.) offers slugs a bewildering "ease" for sheltering from drought / sun during the day, without having to search. And consequently of their predators. Even if some also know where to find them! It must play.

3) I have never observed slugs "eating" hay. On the other hand, I found some "agglutinated" on desiccated milkweeds ... So I don't know what happens under the layer of hay! I tell myself that if on the surface, they move to reach these milks, it is because the hay on which they crawl does not suit them!

4) The question is indeed that of the presence of "carnivores", in sufficient quantity. I don't know how many hedgehogs it would have taken to consume without being sick, the bucket bottoms of slugs that I picked up night after night !!! A bit as if there was a 30 tonnes of hamburger! We would be hard pressed to consume them!

[Moindreffor]

I am not a specialist in archeology at all. On the other hand, I studied "The history of agriculture in the world", by Marcel Mazoyer (successor to René Dumont at the chair of comparative agriculture at INA Paris-Grignon).
And indeed, I may peddle erroneous ideas, as others peddle the idea that "tillage is essential".
Nevertheless, if the "hunt-gather system" was overall superior, why would man have it very widely [there are still some populations of hunter-gatherers], in almost all regions of the world, replaced by a system much more anthropized, called "agriculture" ???
And supposing that he is really stupid (which I happen to ^ think!), Why then populations would have grown, if the system is less efficient ???

the cradle of man is Africa, it should not be forgotten, in this region of the world, the gatherer-hunter actually has everything in abundance
when man went to conquer other regions, he had to face other conditions, and there agriculture proved to be much more beneficial, it suffices to see the evolution of populations, Europe s very quickly found more populated than Africa
so we must see agriculture as a vital necessity, and not as an evolution, man began to cultivate by obligation for his survival, without this necessity, the lazy man remains in his deckchair ... (unfortunately Man went from lazy to lazy ...)

an excellent report on the Maasai shows that by teaching them to cultivate, their living conditions have improved but at the cost of a disruption of their cultural habits

[guibnd]

They attribute to the cover all the effects observed (including those of the suppression of the anti-slug!). It is in any case, one of the big obstacles in promoting our way of gardening !!

yes, this shortcut is tempting for many who forget a little quickly that slugs also swarmed in the hay-free garden that was sprayed with methadeid and quickly controlled

2) Yes, the problem is more complex. There are different species of slugs. The little black girls attack underground. They "dug" me, at ground level, melon stalks in the way that wireworm larvae dig lettuce roots underground for me ...

yes, the little black girls are terrible! indeed, they also eat the roots ...
Besides, I only have little black girls in my garden.
before, we had the good big boobs, big oranges ... I haven't seen any of these for a long time.

[Moindreffor]

it is the 2ème year that I foine and, slugs side, it's not worse than before when I was gardening bare ground!
I remember horrible years - without hay - where slugs ate even onions and shallots !!!
hence my habit of sowing more than necessary and transplant gradually not to eat all my plants at the beginning, there is always a time when they decline and then the seedlings have time to strengthen , grow up and no longer interest them because probably less tender

1) Part of the problem is that often people switch over to conventional gardening (tillage, bare soil ... and “slug” type metaldehyde, the efficiency of which can be seen !!!) to an "ecological" gardening, with ground cover and metaldehyde prohibited!

They attribute to the cover all the effects observed (including those of the suppression of the anti-slug!). It is in any case, one of the big obstacles in promoting our way of gardening !!

2) Yes, the problem is more complex. There are different species of slugs. The little black girls attack underground. They "dug" me, at ground level, melon stalks in the way that wireworm larvae dig lettuce roots underground for me ...

Nonetheless, I would be inclined to think that hay (and any similar thick cover - straw, etc.) offers slugs a bewildering "ease" for sheltering from drought / sun during the day, without having to search. And consequently of their predators. Even if some also know where to find them! It must play.

3) I have never observed slugs "eating" hay. On the other hand, I found some "agglutinated" on desiccated milkweeds ... So I don't know what happens under the layer of hay! I tell myself that if on the surface, they move to reach these milks, it is because the hay on which they crawl does not suit them!

4) The question is indeed that of the presence of "carnivores", in sufficient quantity. I don't know how many hedgehogs it would have taken to consume without being sick, the bucket bottoms of slugs that I picked up night after night !!! A bit as if there was a 30 tonnes of hamburger! We would be hard pressed to consume them!

we sometimes forget that slugs are animals with "cold blood" and therefore that even if they do not like when it is dry, they do not like it either when it is cold, and what is one of the disadvantages of hay, a ground "colder" than a bare ground, therefore the slugs prefer to move on the surface

after it should not be underestimated the appetite of a hedgehog couple, because the hedgehog lives in couple, it is enough to observe its movements dad in front of the offspring in the middle and mom behind (or vice versa), observes a thrush or a blackbird that feeds it can carry 4 or 5 worms in its beak at the same time

[Did67]

I have never yet seen a thrush or blackbird attacking slugs ... Alas.

For the hedgehog, a family must nibble a lot, I suppose ... Nevertheless, evening after evening, 2 or 3 cm of slugs in the bottom of a bucket, this must greatly exceed the capacity of a few stomachs of hedgehogs!

But that's it, after a long fortnight, it is collapsing now (I was not last night, too tired).

[Moindreffor]

I have never yet seen a thrush or blackbird attacking slugs ... Alas.

For the hedgehog, a family must nibble a lot, I suppose ... Nevertheless, evening after evening, 2 or 3 cm of slugs in the bottom of a bucket, this must greatly exceed the capacity of a few stomachs of hedgehogs!

But that's it, after a long fortnight, it is collapsing now (I was not last night, too tired).

you should not neglect the extraordinary reserve potential that constitutes your neighborhood, if you say that sometimes a simple garden border can be an obstacle for predators, it can also be for prey, and in you may not be allowed for wild boars, but open bar for slugs from the neighborhood

[to be chafoin]

Nevertheless, if the "hunt-gather system" was overall superior, why would man have it very widely [there are still some populations of hunter-gatherers], in almost all regions of the world, replaced by a system much more anthropized, called "agriculture" ???
And to imply that it is really con (what I happen to think!), Why then the populations would have grown, if the system is less efficient ???
That there are other reasons that limit populations, at specific times (diseases, etc ...), I agree. In the very long term, the human species, like the majority of species, seems to base its population on the resources of its ecological niche (place, source of energy). Very exactly on the "minimum peaks" (famines) ...

I'm not a specialist in archeology either, it's a subject that interests me.
I didn't say the "hunt-and-gather system" was superior. From what I know, it was just different, far from the most common clichés and even worthy of some interest. The question of why it has been replaced almost everywhere is vast and interesting, difficult to talk about like that. Agriculture has corresponded to a change in mentality, but we must not forget that some regions adopted it very late, others were forced or forced to do so and others did not adopt it at all.
Nor did I say that farming is a dumb system (although I sometimes think so too!). It is true that he "allowed" the population to grow. There was a demographic surplus which moreover certainly contributed to a sort of overflow by the number of the hunt-gather culture.
For famines, it seems credible to think that famines appeared only with agriculture and paradoxically ...

But, starting from a droppings which resembled a granule of Ferramol, we are perhaps moving a little too far from the subject of this thread ...

[Adrien (ex-nico239)]

I have never yet seen a thrush or blackbird attacking slugs ... Alas.

For the hedgehog, a family must nibble a lot, I suppose ... Nevertheless, evening after evening, 2 or 3 cm of slugs in the bottom of a bucket, this must greatly exceed the capacity of a few stomachs of hedgehogs!

But that's it, after a long fortnight, it is collapsing now (I was not last night, too tired).

As said elsewhere even if we have almost no, after all these rain episodes I saw one or two of a few mm or even 2 cm.

There are predators of adult slugs

BUT, slugs are not born adults that I know of

The question I was asking myself was, wouldn't there be a predator of the baby slug, which could perhaps explain our small population?

Who could decimate baby slugs?
Because here we no longer need a big beast a little one could do the trick right?

[to be chafoin]

Nonetheless, I would be inclined to think that hay (and any similar thick cover - straw, etc.) offers slugs a bewildering "ease" for sheltering from drought / sun during the day, without having to search. And consequently of their predators. Even if some also know where to find them! It must play.

3) I have never observed slugs "eating" hay. On the other hand, I found some "agglutinated" on desiccated milkweeds ... So I don't know what happens under the layer of hay! I tell myself that if on the surface, they move to reach these milks, it is because the hay on which they crawl does not suit them!

we sometimes forget that slugs are animals with "cold blood" and therefore that even if they do not like when it is dry, they do not like it either when it is cold, and what is one of the disadvantages of hay, a ground "colder" than a bare ground, therefore the slugs prefer to move on the surface

I wondered in this regard if the predators of slugs like the carabe did not prefer to stay under the hay which could explain the migration of molluscs to the surface ...

[to be chafoin]

On the other hand, I studied "The history of agriculture in the world", by Marcel Mazoyer (successor to René Dumont at the chair of comparative agriculture at INA Paris-Grignon).

the cradle of man is Africa, it should not be forgotten, in this region of the world, the gatherer-hunter actually has everything in abundance
when man went to conquer other regions, he had to face other conditions, and there agriculture proved to be much more beneficial, it suffices to see the evolution of populations, Europe s very quickly found more populated than Africa
so we must see agriculture as a vital necessity, and not as an evolution, man began to cultivate by obligation for his survival, without this necessity, the lazy man remains in his deckchair ... (unfortunately Man went from lazy to lazy ...)

It is true that agriculture-animal husbandry did not first appear in areas of abundance. The Indians of the North American plains did not try to break their ass to domesticate a cow when they had quantity of wild bison within their reach. Same thing for the Amazonian tapirs (where the hunter-gatherers stayed until the arrival of the colonists), the acorns and the salmon of the northwest coast of North America or the acorns and chestnuts of the hunters Japanese Jomon pickers who were already growing trees ...
The conditions for the appearance of agriculture are therefore: an environment neither too favorable (bad years can succeed good ones) nor too unfavorable (possibility of settling down, hence often the presence of rivers for their resources well distributed throughout the year), technical capacity for storing agricultural products (airtight container, silo pit to block the germination of cereals thanks to the carbon dioxide released by the grains), protection of crops against predators (domestication of cats and dog, aerial granaries whose posts are provided with washers preventing the escalation of the rodents), capacities to take care of the domesticated animals. But these are just conditions.
Sedentary agriculture originated in various homes around the world. It was neither an inevitable, programmed evolution, nor necessarily a vital necessity but rather a cultural creation which brought an undeniable advantage in the eyes of men. The oldest focus seems to have been the Middle East (-10000) in an area of ​​present-day Turkey, in the "fertile crescent". There was then, it seems and for what concerns us, a slow cultural colonization step by step, started towards -6500 towards Western Europe starting from this hearth. Towards - 4000 it is estimated that there are no more hunter-gatherers in Europe.
Indeed there is a demographic surge that goes with this transition to the Neolithic: women who made 1 child every 3 years, make 1 per year!