The young long bean plants settling in.

I started off the new year with good intentions. When seeds that I had sown on new year’s day germinated and started to grow well in their little biodegradable cardboard rolls, I actually took the step to transplant them before they got rootbound – my most common failure when growing from seeds.

The angled luffa plants were repotted in bigger pots while the corn went into an enclosed patch where the plants were well mulched. I even cleared the trellis of the previous season’s long bean plants in anticipation of planting out the new plants, which I did on Saturday. On Sunday afternoon, there was a really heavy downpour that flattened two of the seven long bean plants. I straightened them and gave them more support in the hopes that they would keep growing anyway, and to be safe, direct sowed more long bean seeds in the bed.

Monday evening, I went to check on the plants to see if they’d recovered or not.

Leaves gone, stems left… I know what the culprit is!!!

Not!

Again!!!

The darned snails had beheaded every single long bean plant, leaving the stems looking like weird skinny green scarecrows! I certainly hope my neighbours did not hear me, because I was cursing at the snails most vehemently. It had taken those plants two weeks to grow and the snails one evening to destroy them.

The snail pellets have been deployed. War has been declared!

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