There were blossoms on this lemon tree.
There is no set fruit on this lemon tree. I think it is because snails ate mini fruits, unless there were no bees in the front. I saw snails, and have not recently seen bees. It could have been another problem, so while I work to reduce the snail population, I will keep my eyes open.
Two one-inch diameter snails on the inside of a leaf stump.
A snail on the inside of a leaf stump of a Sabal palm at the south side of the kitchen garden. The living snails are attached to something. Colorless fallen snails are empty and dead.
Gloves are required to hand-pick snails to drop into some coke, which kills them. I thus collected about 20 snails, lidded the jar, and placed it into the trash. This is an organic way to reduce snail population numbers. The gloves are needed, because the snails ride on slime, and when you pick them up it will get on hands.
I found this 1/2 inch wide snail on some lettuce. I vaguely remembered having heard of some rather devastating parasites that can be present in snails in some alternate forms.
Snails are a common gardening problem, and so I decided to cook my lettuce, to be 100% sure that we do not catch any theoretical parasitic beasties. I have not seen that snails eat parsley, cilantro, oregano, or marjoram. In fact these seem to discourage creepy crawlies on nearby plants. I could find that snails are very common in Texas gardens, and I’ve seen them myself. I could find no place where snails in Texas gardens are stated to be dangerous online. Until I find otherwise, I am going to be careful and cook or at least peal raw vegetables from our garden.
The other reason that I cooked the lettuce, is that most of it is old and bitter, even if not bolted.
Here are the keywords I googled to find the link to the recipe which I used for our Stir Fry Lettuce: Chinese Stir-Fry Lettuce With Garlic Recipe . Rhonda Parkinson, recipe author, tells us that the Chinese always cook their vegetables. When I think about it, this seems to be my experience. This five star recipe worked even with our bitter old lettuce!
