Today In The Garden

I was just going to finally haul the two boxes I planted with pansies, smaller violas and some bulbs back in ...November? to the front of the house.
Hah.
A missed lunch later, I only made it back in before keeling over because it had started to rain in earnest. This always happens. :)

In any case, instead of working on my Plant ID portfolio I spent the afternoon poking about the garden. I
- turned over the compost bin and added the spent compost of one tomato planter
- tidied up the strawberries (still trying to bloom and with more (raw, rotting) berries on than in July! what? ...maybe they should've been watered more in the summer...?)
- moved said planters to the front, where they look lonely and out of place. must buy more winter bedding and plant the other two boxes. the planters spent the interim in my tiny plastic greenhouse with the intention of giving the pansies a chance to get properly establish before having to face the full fury of the elements. seems to have worked.
- set lots of slug bars, with Science:

Slug Science!

The beer on the left is the cheapest by volume I could find at Lidl, the right-hand one was the cheapest you could buy by individual can; Excelsior Lager you could only get in packs of four. After the surprising results of the last experiment, I'm not going put that much faith on the "Reinheitsgebot" claims on the Pils until I see what's what.

The experiment set-up at at the end of November:

Bottom right is tap water for control.

After a few nights, the Carlsberg had maybe five slugs, ditto the Guinness (which I'd expected to win hands down), and the Heineken had dozens. Far too many to count, anyway (...which makes this not real science, but I do amuse myself so.).


Speaking of composting, there's something very badly awry with the bigger of the two kitty poop vermicomposts: the poop level has stopped going down and there are dead worms, which has never happened before. My guess is that I've just overloaded them when the room is colder and they work more slowly. An attempt at a solution would be to remove some of the poops as well as any dead worms, but, well, ew. Luckily I have a box of vinyl gloves, and the rubbish goes out this evening...