Garden planning, back corner

When we bought the house, there were already several kinds of plants in the garden, mostly flowers. Most of them were kinds we weren't familiar with, like this:



While very pretty and colorful, they took up a lot of space.



And they harbored and sustained the mortal enemy of the vegetable garden, the gastropod.



Sure, they look all cute and interesting, but they can get almost anywhere. We once saw a tv program about an escargot farm, and the snail farmers demonstrated that the snails are able to crawl over barbed wire and knife blades without injuring themselves (thick layer of slime, ftw!). I found this one



on this thorned berry vine (in the middle of the picture) hanging 20 feet or more down a stone wall behind our house.



Moreover, they ate the hell out of the plants I actually wanted in the garden. I tried using this "slug-away" gel, but it is a pain to encircle every single plant, and then it washes away too fast to really protect the seedlings.



Luckily, pumpkin plants can mostly grow fast enough to replace what gets eaten, but not so much the pumpkins themselves.



So last fall I spent a backbreaking half a day digging up those flowers at the top of this entry to deny the sluggy assholes a shady bower to snack on while they wait to denude my garden during the night. I am planning to put tomatoes in there instead, because I have been assured that they (as members of the nightshade family) repel slugs.

-Nee in Germany is planning while the sun don't shine