i joined a community garden.
we are having a debate about - Snails !
about half the members smash the snails.
some of the members throw the snails into an area under some apple trees.
the soil is incredibly fertile. a testament to the hard work of the earthworms & snails that are eating & creating fertilizer & castings.
as a new member, i don't want to lock horns with the snail-smashing members.
so i asked a few people to save snails for me. i brought the snails home, and didn't have anywhere to put them.
so i put them in a coffee pot.
www.geocities.com/pedalli...e_p2ot.jpg
then i realized that i had run out of filters for my other coffee pot, and since i had a whole bunch of filters for the coffee pot shown, i moved the snails to a gallon plastic juice jug.
then i made the mistake of putting honeydew melon rinds and pineapple rinds in the snail's home, thinking that i was doing something wonderfully organic.
a day or 2 later, and all the snails were on life support. unconscious, not moving.
though i don't care too much about this particular batch of snails, i decided i should treat it as an emergency.
so i filled up a can with spring water, and rinsed all the snails off.
during the next few hours, about 3/4 of them revived.
they are now in a new home, a 5 gallon bucket with a plastic netting (from a bag of tangerines)/ duct tape cover.
www.geocities.com/pedalli...ome_2_.jpg
not exactly in the same family of industrial design as the iPod, but it'll have to do.
in the meantime, i'm working on a bigger cage for them, full of Swiss Chard. apparently, that is what they like to eat.
i'm hopeful that their castings will help turbo-charge my food crops. i'm concentrating on stuff i like to eat (tomatoes, corn) and sugar crops (honedew melon, cantaloupe, watermelon).
i don't really expect the garden to produce much. i'm approaching it more as an educational experience.
our next project is, what to do about the homeless guy that is sleeping in the greenhouse.
personally, i think we ought to give him some food. but, there are contrasting view points.
i'm not yet sure how this city will do when TSHTF.
but, for sure, we'll have loads of Swiss Chard.
