Breeding against slugs ?

[nicollas]

Slug is a big problem in my garden, as for many gardeners.

I'm reading Breed Your Own Vegetables Variety by Carole Deppe, and she mentions (p68-70, first edition) one unusual mustard with hairs that seems to deter slugs and other pests. She also says that one aspect of breeding against pest, is that to bred/grow that "can be eaten only by animals that know how to cook" (ie growing things that are strong/biter tasting when raw but pleasant when cooked).

Do you know others directions to select/breed against slugs ?

Are you aware of any cultivars or characteristics that are good against slugs among species of vegetables ?

Do you know if the special mustard of Carole Deppe became a star or disappeared ?

Thanks for any idea

[Joseph Lofthouse]

I have a pear tree with a bitter skin. It has to be over-ripe for the bitterness to disappear. That is great because it is bug-proof. I can peel the fruits and eat them greenish or ripen them on the kitchen counter.

Breeding against slugs is like any other breeding: Plant a genetically diverse population, make sure that they are infected, and select for the plants that are most resistant to slugs.

Snails don't eat my tomatoes. They love leeks, cepa onions, watermelon, peas, spinach, but don't care for walking onions, garlic, chives, spearmint, or raspberries. They don't bother the fruit trees or grapes.

[oxbowfarm]

To my knowledge Carol has never released that hairy mustard. There are a number of her breeding projects that she describes but haven't been released for whatever reason. Sandwich Slice squash being another big one.

If you want slug resistant brassica advice I'd PM trixtrax. He is wealthy in brassica germplasm and hails from the land of the banana slug.

[diane]

Now, don't malign our banana slug. They behave themselves. It's the wee imported ones that eat our vegetables.

[templeton]

I think Deppe also mentions a fast emerging pea that outgrows the slug zone. I use a different strategy - blue tongue lizards (Tiliqua sp) . But I've begun to notice I've now got a Currawong (Strepara sp, a corvid)problem, predating my blueys...I've had success with dry sawdust mulch around the seedlings, and crushed dry eggshells, but these are not really a breeding solution.

Joseph's strategy will work if there's a brassica in your mix that the slugs don't prefer, but if they eat them all, back to square one. If Deppe had success with hairy brassicas, I would start with them, looking for something that was also palatable. Or grow the hairy ones round the outside, with tasty ones on the inside. Perhaps with a distraction sacrifical crop outside the ring. One issue I can forsee is getting the palatable varieties to grow long enough to actually cross with the resistant ones, and produce seed, thus my suggestion for other interim strategies.
One possible reason for the lack of release of Deppes material might be that the hairy ones were only less palatable - the slugs prefer the smooth ones, but if there are only hairy ones maybe they eat them nontheless...

Let us know your progress.
T

[hortusbrambonii]

Are the companion plants that are known to keep away slugs/snail from vegetables?

[flowerweaver]

We just bury empty cans up to their lips about every three feet and fill them with cheap beer. In the morning the cans are filled with hundreds of drowned slugs. Sometimes they entirely have displaced the beer.

[ilex]

Other than breeding, raise some ducks. Make sure they are a carnivorous breed. They love snails and slugs. I used them as snail control in oranges and they wouldn't touch green things as long as snails were available. Amazing how much they eat.

[diane]

I can't imagine what a self-respecting slug would be doing living on the edge of the desert. They're probably so parched that they would
fill up your cans if you filled them with plain water and you could use your beer for other purposes.

[steev]

I thought banana slugs might be good escargot-wise, until I realized how fond they are of fresh dog-poo. Now, I'd just as soon cut out the middle-mollusk and have deep-fried dog-shit.

[billw]

Ducks will eat the slugs and the dog poop and I have to imagine they taste a hell of a lot better than either, although I haven't made a direct comparison. Unfortunately, they will eat most garden plants as well, so I only use them to work the perimeter and fallow areas.

I suspect that breeding for slug resistance in most cases will be breeding for less palatable varieties. What makes a plant unappealing to slugs often makes it unappealing for us as well. Slugs are easy to beat with a little regular work. A headlamp, a bucket, and a pair of long tongs employed at least once per week eliminates most of our slug damage.

[trixtrax]

ilex has it, if you've got slugs, can you fit ducks into the system?

The mouthpiece of a slug operates on a plane, so anytime the slug has to re-orient its mouthpiece, it has to work for its food that much harder. In the Land of the Slugs aka Pacific NW, varieties which have leaves with some "dimension" to them rather than those that have flat simple leaves seem to resist slugs better. Varieties like Triple-Curled Parsley and extremely variegated Brassicas like Bear Necessities kale, Russian Frills kale, mizuna, Diplotaxis tenufolia work better than savoy cabbages. Truthfully savoy cabbages get beaten badly here.

There are certain plant families that slugs seem to really relish, here one family is the Apiaceae (Carrot family). Also Alliums rank high here. Slugs need similar basic nutrition to us and seek out their environments hard-to-get phyto-chemicals and nutrients so proliferating "weeds" in those families have helped provide trap slug-fodder crops here and previously. A plant that really fits the bill is Ground-Elder/Goutweed (Aegopodium podagraria), but I hesitate to plant it around due to its extreme persistence.

Hair in Brassica's is a tricky thing. It is a strong advantage to have hairs at seedling development, but if the hairs persist in a mature plant, it seems the plant tends to be tougher and possibly more bitter.

[trixtrax]

Another strategy is to try to manage the balance between Gatropods on one team and beetles + other first decomposers of mostly dead and dying plant material on the other team. In a well-regulated ecosystem there numbers shift back and forth between the teams, but as we have invader slugs and snails their team tends to dominate in disturbed ecosystems. Creating sites for beetle diversity in the garden as well as killing a bunch of slugs and leaving the remains around will foster beetle numbers. Slugs relish beetle eggs and certain ground-dwelling beetles relish slug eggs. Many beetles like relatively undisturbed refugia sites around the garden with piles of well decayed shredded wood and moisture. Many beetles also associate some way with fungi.

[nicollas]

Feb 28, 2014 15:14:59 GMT -5 nicollas said:

I'm reading Breed Your Own Vegetables Variety by Carole Deppe, and she mentions (p68-70, first edition) one unusual mustard with hairs that seems to deter slugs and other pests. She also says that one aspect of breeding against pest, is that to bred/grow that "can be eaten only by animals that know how to cook" (ie growing things that are strong/biter tasting when raw but pleasant when cooked).

Do you know if the special mustard of Carole Deppe became a star or disappeared ?

Carol Deppe have you any update on this ?
Thanks

[Carol Deppe]

The hairy mustard succumbed to a move and a change in situations and interests. It had a bland flavor, and at the time I much preferred the richer flavor of cooked 'Green Wave'. (I better appreciate all the flavors of greens now, including the bland ones. This was 20 years back.) Where I moved to, deer, not slugs, were the issue. So I started growing and breeding with 'Green Wave'. And a duck flock dealt with the slugs as well as other pests.

The pea succumbed to practical realities and greater information. By the time I had tried overwintering enough different varieties, I basically figured out that any medium height or tall pea that grows fast in winter will do pretty well at getting up above the most slug-vulnerable line and outrunning the slugs as long as this is Willamette Valley garden slugs we're talking about (not banana slugs), and there are not too many. I ended up deciding that I had mostly just reinvented the tall type of pea. Then, with further experience, I lost interest in tall peas. Oregon Sugar Pod II and Oregon Giant Sugar, both Jim Baggett/Oregon State varieties that are medium (up to about 3') in height do about as well at outrunning slugs as my "special" variety did. And it didn't help when I figured out that pole varieties of peas actually don't yield more than the best of the medium vine varieties. They don't necessarily have more leaf surface or more pods or bigger pods or better flavor compared with these elite medium-vine types such as the two mentioned OSU varieties. The pole types simply have much longer internodes so take much more serious support so are much more work for the amount of food. I can support a small patch of the medium-vine types with just a tomato support ring. Basically, I quit growing tall peas, including my own. What it amounted to is that I ended up deciding that what I had bred did not measure up to what was already available. Those two OSU varieties are also resistant to pea enation, pea wilt, and powdery mildew, with the result that they can be planted in the mild maritime NW from spring to August for crops from early summer through fall. And both will overwinter from a mid-October planting.

For a number of years I tried alternate ways to produce something similar to 'Sandwich-slice" squash that would be easier to breed into a stable variety, but it didn't work. So after a long intermission I've gone back to that seed and have started working with it again. It segregates all sorts of stuff, so it's going to take a while.

I developed celiac disease (now inactive, since I eat no wheat), which refocused my breeding interest just as I was writing Breed Your Own. Long before I knew what the problem was my breeding interests turned very strongly in the direction of corn, squash, and beans, the crops that gave me the ability to produce my own staples instead of depending upon commercial staples that include wheat as a major or minor or cross contaminating ingredient in almost everything.

Among the varieties I've released are the corns 'Cascade Ruby-Gold Flint', 'Cascade Creamcap Flint', 'Magic Manna Flour', the reselected (maxima) squash line 'Sweet Meat--Oregon Homestead', the pepo 'Candystick Dessert Delicata', 'Hannan Popbean' (a garbanzo), 'Fast Lady Northern Southern Pea' (a cowpea), and a reselection of 'Gaucho' (an Argentine heirloom). I'm especially proud of the 'Candystick.' It is bigger and has thicker flesh than any other delicata. As a consequence the average fruit actually has about four times as much food or more than other delicata varieties. It's also more vigorous, more productive, and I think, tastes better. It has a flavor reminescent of a Medjool date. You can see or download my seedlist at my website www.caroldeppe.com. But be aware that I operate as a seed company (Fertile Valley Seeds) only seasonally (late winter and spring), and do not ship seeds the rest of the year. The rest of the time I'm plant breeding, doing garden research, growing seeds, or writing books. Various of my released varieties are also sold by Nichols, Adaptive Seeds, Bountiful Gardens, and Southern Exposure. All these good folks either buy from me wholesale or pay a friendly voluntary royalty to help support my work, so I'm happy to have them selling seed of my varieties.

I have a new book coming out soon, The Tao of Vegetable Gardening: Cultivating Tomatoes, Greens, Peas, Beans, Squash, Joy, and Serenity. Among other things, it has a last chapter that includes sections on the Do-It-Yourself seed bank, breeding landraces, dehybridizing (tomato) hybrids, breeding varieties adapted to organic growing conditions, general tomato genetics, and breeding tomatoes for resistance to late blight and other diseases. I focused so much on tomato breeding because I think the more virulent lines of late blight now spreading worldwide and the escape of both mating types of the disease mean that we are going to become unable to grow all or nearly all of the heirloom tomatoes we so cherish in the next decade or so. And University and commercial breeders are focusing on commercial varieties and mostly releasing them just as hybrids. If we want tomatoes with heirloom style flavors, we will need to breed them ourselves. So I am challenging all gardeners everywhere to get busy and take responsibility for breeding the heirloom tomatoes of tomorrow. The book is due out in January. (It's already up for preorders at Amazon, Chelsea Green, and elsewhere.) The book has gone through editing, copyediting, design, cover design, and is now at the proofreaders. It will soon come back to me for final review, probably just when we're trying to harvest about 10,000 lbs of squash.