Used willow stakes to support my terraced garden. They came alive! Might be my only growing success, damn slugs are destroying everything.
Awesome idea. Feed the slugs so they don’t eat the things you want to grow.
Supposedly a shallow dish filled with beer will attract and drown slugs - I say supposedly only because I dont have enough of a slug problem to warrant getting rid of them and confirming first hand that it works.
I live in Oregon. I buy the cheapest beer I can find for the slugs. I'm a good party host!
(Yes, it's effective. Gross, too.)
Leaving lengths of wood on bare soil is the best way to collect slugs, cheap and effective.
Can confirm beer traps work, as long as you keep replacing the beer. You can make them by burying glass jars as well.
What a coincidence, I'm also at war with the slugs and also growing living stakes. What are the chances pruned apple-branches will grow into something useful?
Willow roots and grows from cuttings very easily. Fruit trees, not so much.
I heard mulberries can so last year in winter I got about 10 cuttings each from two varieties of mulberries I wanted from an acquaintance. I kept them in water then stuck them in a garden bed. They had pathetic leaves all summer, nothing vigorous and no new shoots. This spring, only one out of 20 had even the puniest roots, so I transplanted it to one of the spots I had (overoptimistically) prepared. I guess last summer they acted like cuttings in a vase of water, just keeping green leaves but not actually rooting or growing.
Have you Tried any rooting hormones
Rooting hormones aren't available where I live, and I had heard that mulberries root readily. I'll try some rooting hormones next year if possible
If you use rooting hormone, consider lightly scraping the bark in a few places on the end that will go into the ground. I've heard that increases the area where roots will grow.
My understanding is that willow cuttings secrete root hormone. I think white willow? Not sure as I haven't tried it myself. But the idea is you put it in a vase with the cutting you want to grow roots and keep cutting the roots of the willow. Since you can't easily get root hormones it's worth a shot
Yes I've heard that too and should try it again, willow water as a rooting hormone.
Willow water (or a stick of willow in with your rooting focus), honey, and aloe all help rooting. Good luck!
Too soon for me to really say but all three dormant Apple branches I stuck in the ground this spring sprouted leaves and haven't dropped them a couple months later. None of my grapes did; I was expecting the opposite!
Unfortunately often scions will leaf out like that just off stored energy but never develop roots, especially fruit trees like apple and other orchard fruits which are very hard to root like that. To be honest I wouldn't rate their chances even they look like they're taking off now. As to why the grapes DIDN'T leaf out, I haven't had a lot of success just sticking them in the ground. I think they need a lot of water, I've found it easier to put dormant grape scions in water and they leaf out very quickly, but they still take ages to root.
Thanks! I will keep my hopes low for the apples.
Hey, you never know..!
Do not use willow for hugelkultur... Glad I no longer live in that house!
Oh no. I must go check my compost.
Have you tried a shallow dish of beer to control the slugs?
I can only visit my garden every three days - would that still work?
It will definitely help!
Yes, it would still work. You can also use Sluggo, which is 1% Iron Phosphate pellets, to control slugs and snails. Mulch less deeply, cap the top of the wooden sides with copper banding, remove the bottoms of tin cans to make a protective collar around seedlings, these are all ways to reduce slug damage.
I had an awful slug and pill bug problem earlier this season, and what worked for me was a combination of beer traps (changed every 2-3 days, used incredibly cheap beer), decoy plants (marigolds mostly), and hand picking. I also used sluggo plus recently to finish them off (planting some super delicate starts and wanted to be extra safe).
While it sounds like nightly hand picking won’t work well for you if you only visit every three days, the combo of beer traps and decoy plants worked wonders for me. I would also look into sluggo+ if you want as it works on both slugs and pillbugs and as far as I can tell helps fertilize the garden as well.
I had the same thing happen with a willow log that someone had left by the curb. I grabbed it to use it as pathway edging/a nurse log. Not too long after, all sorts of shoots were coming out! Pretty cool how that works.
Last year, my parents made a few arches with willow branches to support a net and protect some vegetables. Each branch sprouted vertically, giving 10 more branches. This year I grabbed the arches, bent them back flat, dug trenches and planted them here. Boom, instant willow fence with 50 stakes growing from 5 horizontal ones.
This is what I am planning to do once my land is in the permanent state (we are going to build a house there so lots of construction work). Just heaps of willow fences, arches, statues and gazebos. I just fell in love.
That is awesome. You could start planting some in safe but non-definitive locations already regardless of the construction work, just so that you can later cut them and get a nice "willow fence starter kit" with many branches.
already on it! Giddy with excitement. There's a field above us and sometimes it floods the storm gutter and houses below. Willows will definitely help! I have seen some neighbors planting willows above their property, so I am going to continue this good trend.
Nice roots!
Are there any downsides to doing this? No regrets 5 years later that now you have unkillable willow everywhere? It doesn't compete with nearby plants? That kind of thing.
They won't compete because we cut the grass around the fence on both sides, so we'll get any straggler automatically.
Picture please!!!
Hopefully it helps, and hopefully something comes out of your garden!
I reuse wood from our yard and it always gets me. It’s like a middle finger from a piece of wood I thought I killed.
time to read what you can cook out of willow!
Mulched a bunch of pathways a month ago, I'm finding sprouted branches that didn't get fully chipped
Mix some ammonia with water and spray the slugs after dark. I had slugs completely ravage a few seedlings, I went out two nights in a row and sprayed around all of my tender plants. Tonight was my third consecutive night going out, hardly any to spray.
We do that with Glyricidia, perfect living fence and green manure combo.
Build frog pond/habitat. No more slugs.
Frogs eat slugs? Which kind of frogs? In our area there's only Rana Temporaria and Bufo Bufo (European Common Frog and Common Toad)
Honestly I’m new to it, I noticed slugs eating our strawberries in the front yard by the road and our garden in the back I haven’t had any issues at all. Biggest difference is we have a lot of woods in the back and a ton of frogs at night. Google says they eat slugs. I’m not sure what kind they are though. I’m currently building them a small pond with more hiding spots near the garden. I’m in the south, so I’m not sure how applicable it is to other regions.
you can google your local fauna pretty easily, that's what I did. You're in South Europe?
The Deep South… southern US. I plan on it, haven’t had the time to identify them.
Meanwhile I can't ever propagate cuttings from anything.
Awesome, you can make a living fence from the branches that grow out of that, if it survives. Also, I've had a horrible problem with slugs and pill bugs this year, and since I don't use pesticides the only thing that actually works surprisingly well is chunks of fresh fruit. Pill bugs were chewing through the entire stalk of a young tomato plant overnight. With the bait fruit, the slugs and pill bugs don't touch my plants anymore. Hope it works for you!