By early May, all that remained of the three artichoke plants
were a few slime-coated stubs. Volunteers had planted them in
the demonstration garden on the west side of Issaquah’s
Pickering Barn only a few weeks before. “We thought we had
protected them against pests,” said Seattle Tilth’s Falaah
Jones, the garden coordinator. Their measures had protected the
young plants from visiting deer and rabbits, but failed to deter
the slugs. Left uncontrolled, it is not inconceivable that slugs
could consume your tender young vegetable garden it its
entirety. Like many early residents of Issaquah and Sammamish,
the ancestors of our slugs were immigrants from Europe. They
have adapted well to our environment and consume several times
their body weight in a single night. Slugs thrive in moist, dark
conditions, and local gardeners are reporting an increase in
their garden’s slug population this year. By 1929, slugs were
already a serious problem in local kitchen gardens. A gardener
believed to be Ida Mae Tibbetts Goode,