Green Home Living

Issue 002's So I Tried It . . .

by Sue Moore

According to the Bay Area Water Pollution Prevention Agencies "more than half of the pesticides causing water quality problems are used in urban areas by residents, home gardeners and pest control professionals in and around homes, schools and businesses." In that case we really can do something to make a significant dent in a significant statistic.

So I started digging around the internet for some interesting pesticide alternatives when I stumbled upon one of the GardenWeb forums. If you are a gardening enthusiast the GardenWeb forums alone are worth any monthly internet access fee. Gardeners from all over the country commune at the GardenWeb to discuss everything from whether a165-pound titan arum carnivorous flower is really carnivorous or just traps its prey for pollination purposes to the drawbacks of positioning clematis next to forsythia. In addition they have a great plant database and glossary, a seed and plant exchange, and an event calendar. Anyway, below is an excerpt of the forum "A Sure Fire Defense Against Snails & Slugs". I've changed the names to protect the innocent.

Posted by C. of So. Cal. zone 9 on Thursday, July 19, 2005 at 12:42

Hi everyone,

I thought I should pass on my little secret regarding snails and slugs. And most likely other little bad bugs in your yard.

BOX TURTLES

Yup, you heard me right. A box turtle is one of the easiest lines of defense against those critters. They will not eat your plants, just your bugs. Just make sure that you don't have any holes in your fence. Depending on the size of your yard, you might need more than one Box Turtle. They cost $15 give or take, they are more than [sic] happy to live in your yard and take care of those bad bugs, and kids like them too.

You will need a bush for them to hide under, most of us have those. And a way for them to get water regularly, an area near their bush that makes a shallow pond and you are on your way. If it gets cold in the winter in your zone, just box them up and let them hibernate in your garage until spring.

Posted by: N of NC Zone 7a on Friday, Aug 10, 2005 at 5:19

Great! I have wanted a box turtle for a while now. Do you know where to purchase one? Do they have to be fenced in, or will they stay as long as there's food for them (there is!)?

Posted by: P. of SoCal Zone 9/10 on Sunday, Aug 12, 2005 at 12:27

... Having box turtles on "snail patrol" sounds great -- my parents' neighbors have kept a tortoise named Touché in their back yard for years. I didn't know he ate snails. Good boy! We can't have one because we have a big dog.

Posted by: RL of TX Zone 8 on Thursday, August 16, 2005 at 1:35

I love my box turtles and, yes, they will roam if you don't have a fence or leave the gates open. Thank goodness my dogs never pay any attention to them.

I don't know where you can buy them, but be careful collecting them. Some turtles, like the desert tortoises in Texas, are protected and there is a heavy fine for even touching one.

Most of mine just walked up on my Mom's patio. Someone else like me is probably seeding the neighborhood. We have babies hatch, but they hide so well sometimes we don't see them until they are 3 or 4 years old, but then I have a lot of foliage and mulchie stuff all over for them to hide in and to find little bugs and snails that they eat. I have shallow pans of water at various places and find them sitting in them on a hot day.

They are great pets, I think, and learn very fast that when I am out in the garden I will dig them a worm if they come up to me.

Issue 001's So I Tried It . . .
Conclusion . . .

by Sue Moore

(If you didn't read "So I tried it..." from Issue One, you may want to read it before continuing on here.)

For stubborn stains the washing soda package instructions recommended I prepare a paste consisting of four tablespoons of washing soda to ¼ cup of warm water. I hate following recipes and initially resisted the need for such tedious accuracy, but since I felt oddly like I was baking and I did want to salvage the tablecloth, I got out the measuring cups and spoons and did as instructed. I was to "dampen the problem area" and, wearing rubber gloves, massage the paste into the stain.

As I stirred the warm water into the washing soda I was pleasantly surprised by its subtle, clean smell. I had been concerned that this paste-making process would spark a fizzy reaction that would give off an unpleasant odor reminiscent of my high school chemistry classroom. Not at all. What did remind me of chemistry class was how the wine stains turned a grayish, blue green color immediately upon contact with the paste. (It wasn't a bad color, so I thought if worse came to worse I could just dye the whole tablecloth using red wine and washing soda.) Only the wine and the fruit stains produced such notable fireworks, however. The four-tablespoon-quarter-cup ratio didn't exactly make a paste; it was more like a thick stew. As I rubbed it in, the water soaked into the fabric leaving behind thick blotches of washing soda to suffocate the spots. I arbitrarily decided to give it thirty minutes to do its thing.

In the meantime, I cleaned the bathroom (1).

I thought that a fair representation would be to clean half the tub and sink with Clorox scouring powder and half with the recommended all-purpose cleaning solution of ½ cup of washing soda to one bucket of warm water. I did so. While I can't say the washing soda cleaned better, it did not clean worse, either. In fact, that evening, two randomly selected dinner guests were asked to choose which side looked cleaner. Neither one could tell the difference. Given the pleasant smell, environmental friendliness (2) and cost effectiveness, washing soda seems to be the clear winner.

Next I filled the washing machine with warm water, added ½ cup of washing soda (per box instructions) and threw in the cloth, allowing it a thirty-minute presoak. Then I added ½ cup of homemade lavender laundry detergent (3) and let it rip.

The anticipation was killing me. Finally the wash cycle ended. I pulled out the tablecloth.

It didn't exactly work.

I was really disappointed. Devastated is going too far, but I was…disillusioned. That's it. Disillusioned. I felt disillusioned when I pulled the tablecloth out of the washer and the stains had not miraculously vanished. Some were gone and some were considerably lightened, but discoloration remained nonetheless. Did this mean that I was going to have to use those evil petroleum-based detergents after all? Suddenly it occurred to me--maybe I had done something wrong! I reread the package instructions again. For best results I was to have pre-soaked overnight. Aha!

But even pre-soaking for two days didn't really do it. I decided to call customer service. From our conversation it became painfully obvious that my experiment was severely flawed. Cold water gets out certain stains while others are removed with hot. I'm embarrassed to say that I hadn't thought of this before, and now many of the stains had been permanently set. I needed to start over. This was probably not such a bad thing as I had begun to lose track of which stain was which, although there was no mistaking the candle wax and red wine stains. This time, though, I would use some cotton napkins that had a low gradient of sentimental value. Here's what I found out. And please do take time to read the endnotes.