This Opuntia phaeacantha was putting out a very small pad in the spring and was transplanted this summer into a larger pot with new soil. It looked like the plant had finished growing before it was transplanted, but then quickly grew again. Instead of putting out another pad it sort of enlarged and expanded the top part of the original small pad. It grew small and then before it was finished the plant changed its mind to wanting a large pad making a strange shape shown here in the photo.

I decided to try the beer in a bowl to see if I could capture the slugs who were trying to eat my Gymnocalycium cactus plants. I stayed up late last night to watch for slugs and found several more, which I removed from the plants. Before going to bed I put out a bowl of beer and the variety in our frig. Happened to be Sapporo - that's a really nice beer to give to slugs.

The next day (today) when I came home from work I checked the bowl of beer for dead slugs. There was one small dead slug, and I guess this method really works. There were also a few dead ants, yellow jackets, house flies and lots of green bottle flies. This beer in a bowl killed a lot more flies than slugs, but things are improving anyway.

The day was sunny enough to allow the surface of the soil to dry out, and I couldn't find any slugs tonight. I think the garlic oil may have helped, at least a little, to keep the slugs from returning to the plants they were feeding on.

Late last night I found a slug climbing on a plastic plant label as thought it were trying to get away from the garlic covered cactus plant. This was a cactus I sprayed about an hour earlier and I'm not sure why the slug ended up climbing the plastic label, but the plastic label was not sprayed with the oil. This fails to prove that the garlic oil was helpful, but it is enough to indicate that the garlic oil may be helpful. It appears that the slug was interested in eating the cactus and then ended up trying to get away from the plant by climbing into a space that wasn't sprayed with the garlic oil.

When it rains often enough for slugs to find their way to the cactus plants, then it is as bad as it can ever get for growing cactus plants in Wisconsin. Most of the state of Wisconsin is in a drought, but Dane County is having plenty of rain. It seems like it has rained every day for the last week and before this the soil hasn't had a chance to completely dry for the last month.

I've been worrying about this for the past few days and today I found half a dozen slugs feeding on some of my Gymnocalycium plants. For some reason slugs are attracted to the old flower parts that remain on developing seed pods. Most of the slugs I found were attached to seed pods, and a few feeding directly on stems. It wasn't even suppose to rain today and it has been overcast and wet all day. Hopefully tomorrow will be a turning point and if everything has a chance to dry for a few days the slugs will go away.

I decided to try some garlic oil on the slugs and most of my Gymnos, and it seems to be helping. The slugs began crawling off of the plants shortly after being sprayed with this garlic oil spray (a horticulture supply that can be purchased in a spray bottle at most greenhouses), and I pulled them off the plants with tweezers. I only flung the slugs a short distance away from the plants, because I want to see if they come back later.

Slugs are very hard to kill and I don't even try, but if it continues to rain I may need to take more drastic measures. I think I'll try putting out a pan of beer and see if that will attract them to crawl into the beer and drown. If it stops raining tomorrow perhaps the garlic oil will be enough to keep them away until the flower pots dry out.

We've had a lot of rain over the week and all of the cacti are soaking wet. I hope we don't lose any of them to mold, and I found a few slugs this morning. Slugs are always bad and if they start the eat the cactus plant stems because the plants will usually die from fungal infections. The weather is supposed to be dry over the next several days, so the slugs will probably not damage any plants.

I did find a rust red and green grasshopper sitting on a Ferocactus and I thought they would make a beautiful photo. Lots of insects like this disguise themselves to look like rocks and plants, but the Ferocactus isn't native to Wisconsin - as is the grasshopper. Perhaps the insect was able to adjust its colors or it just happened to color match the plant, but the grasshopper blends in with the spines very well.

A few days ago I thought I saw a slug on one of our Gymnocalycium plant seed pods, but the seed pod was just oozzing seeds. I think this must be a sign that the seeds are ripe, and the seeds from this pod have been collected cleaned and dried.

This is a plant I bought for Ann a few years ago - in a Wisconsin green house - and it is a pet. It blooms a lot and we thought it would be good to get seeds from it, so we evenutally found a second Gymno of the same species, saglione. Fortunately they both bloomed at the same time this summer and they are both making several seed pods.