Gail's July article is now posted and open for questions and discussion here.

Wish I had you helping me years ago Gail! Thanks again for sharing your healthy earth knowledge with us.

Very informative as usual Gail, you know your stuff, even if your garden is ficticious :-) Only problem is, you keep making me want to grow food, and I have no room.

I wonder if one (or 2) of Caro's road-rescued turtles would be happy in my garden Gail? It would be terrific if they ate pill bugs - wonder if ANYTHING does? Toads don't seem to make a dent in the numbers. After all this rain they are appearing in scary numbers. At least there's compost for them to chomp on and not any seedlings I care about right now, but I dread to think of them not having any predators at all.
Oh, just remembered, your puter is down for a day or two with the carpet going ons.

There are spiders that prey on woodlice (pillbugs), but they,the woodlice, never seem to do much damage, mainly eating the decomposing stuff, perhaps you are too tidy a gardener Maggie, I always have lots of leaves, twigs and dead flower heads laid around for them to chomp on. In fact I dread to think what my garden would be like without the little refuse disposal guys, and the gnome is useless never does a good nights work.

Terry's right, Maggie. Its been a while since pillbugs were an issue for me. When we lived in FW, they were a terrible problem in the garden. Then I started using compost for mulch, and although they were still there, they were no longer pests. In fact, that's how Mercedes got into the organic gardening mode. She watched my pillbug problem resolve, and put out compost in her garden, and same result. At the old farm, we had no topsoil except 36" of sand, and I don't think they live in sandy soils, because I never saw any out there.

I built a garden on rock by making the dirt by hand when ya couldn't buy bedding soil, bulk mulch and volume compost. And I'm still slinging homemade compost and mulch constantly. The pill bugs breed in my piles, so I can't imagine how putting it on sand fixed their numbers. I believe you Caro!, I just don't understand why it happened. The only time their population decreases around here is in the middle of one of our multi-month heat waves.

There are dark brown 3/4" inch spiders that colonize around the compost piles, appearing in cycles. They used to give me the creeps when they first appeared, but they don't make webs and had never bitten me, so I decided they were good guys and got used to them. These must be the pill bug-eaters Terry!!! Hooray!!!

Oh Maggie. You misunderstood me. The pillbug problem was in FW in rock and clay. Also raised beds, like you. Hmmm. Wonder what's going on?

At the old sandy farm, there just plain weren't any pillbugs.

Oh boy, did I ever misread you there Caro! Really must slow down a bit! sorry!
What is Gail going to think when she sees all this chatting going on at her thread without her? We could do some really strange things here (even stranger than my muddle;-) to welcome her back with, Heehee