Author Max Rogers owns a farm on Denman Island and is an occasional contributor to Senior Living.  In this article she talks about her introduction to Khaki Campbell ducks owned by Anne Davidson. Not previously fond of ducks, she had a change of heart when she visited Anne Davidson and saw her wonderful duck condo, complete with in-deck swimming pool. She ends with advice about growing garlic.

Davidson started out in ducks this spring with a duck hoochie. This is a shelter built in the shape of a pup tent and is meant to be portable and to let the ducks out into the garden by means of a ground-level door. The only problem was that Davidson built the hoochie too robustly and found it too heavy to move.

"I drew my son, Julian, a picture of what I wanted which was a house tall enough for me to stand in. The edge of their pen will be under water at times so I thought they needed a deck and decided to put their pool in the deck," said Davidson.

Pink roses and blue borage flowers floated in the pool. Davidson explained that ducks love to eat flowers and she feels they deserve them as she uses the dirty pool water to irrigate her garden and finds her roses blooming much later than ever before. Davidson put the ducks in their pen and they snapped up the flowers until there was only a sprinkle of pink confetti on the water. All four ducks leapt into the pool and swam in a tight circle, completely filling the pool with delighted duck.

"I find the ducks very sweet, entertaining and endearing. I can see that Walt Disney didn't have to work too hard to come up with Donald Duck," said Davidson.

The ducks are also very useful as Davidson's garden backs onto a swamp. "Over the years, I have tried everything to get rid of the slugs. I once picked 14 slugs off a head of broccoli and it wasn't a large head. I did slug patrols morning and evening and I could get 1/3 a bucket of slugs each time. I had to replant so many times; it was just ridiculous," explained Davidson.

Now her patrols bag only 14 or 15 slugs which she feeds to her ducks. It is possible the ducks eat slug eggs too.

Davidson only allows the ducks to run free in the garden when she is there to protect them. "I heard many raccoon versus duck stories so I knew they needed to be protected. I wanted them to roam a bit so we encased their run, top, bottom and sides in hardware cloth. In the first week I had the ducks in their new pen, I was watering the garden at 5:30 in the morning. I shot a jet of water into the raspberries and heard a deep growl. A huge raccoon came out. Another shot of water brought another raccoon who also growled at me and another squirt of water brought a baby out who did not growl."

Davidson feeds her ducks fresh greens each day in their pen. They have not yet eaten her lettuces in the garden which would certainly be a concern with Muscovy ducks. Khaki Campbell ducks are also the very best laying duck, giving over 300 eggs a year.

Davidson's final words on the subject were, "Don't come to me for duck advice because I haven't even had them for a year."

The month this article was written in September.  Much of the following information is about tending your garden in preparation for the fall season.

It is time to plant your garlic. I find that garlic likes seaweed so dig lots in to your new garlic bed. You need a new bed for garlic each year to keep the White Rot at bay. Dig in some compost, lime and a layer of wood ash. I plant my garlic very deep, say four inches deep, and then cover them with a layer of seaweed and a layer of spoiled hay. Every year, my garlic is bigger than the last. I have to harvest it with a digging fork but rarely have to water.

I mulch all my empty beds with layers of seaweed, compost and spoiled hay. This causes a huge boom in the numbers of earthworms who then turn the mulch under for you. In the spring, you can dig the remaining mulch in or, much better, transplant starts into the mulch. Make sure your transplants are big and hardy as the hay mulch breeds lots of slugs too. I have never seen slugs such as we have on Denman. To get rid of the slugs, get a duck.

If you have bad weedy spots in your garden, and I do, you still have time to chop the weeds down, fertilize with whatever you have to hand. I try to apply some bone meal, fish fertilizer, or manure. It doesn't have to be your best compost. Now, layer the area in sheets of cardboard or thick layers of newspaper. Over this, add a thick layer of leaves or hay. The cardboard will kill off the weeds and the worms will improve the soil structure over the winter. Come spring, you can cut holes in the cardboard layer and put some transplants in. This is so much easier than digging up a bad weedy patch.

October is the time to heavily mulch your rhubarb and asparagus plants as they are greedy feeders. Every year, you should be trying to put more organic matter into your garden than you take out. Now is also a good time to spread a pile of hay mulch onto beet and carrot beds to save them from the frosts. Sow lettuces in your cold frames or greenhouse. Spray your fruit trees with dormant oil. A lot of people react badly to the idea of spraying but this is an accepted practice in organic gardening. Pot up some chives and parsley for indoor use and wrap apples in sheets of newspaper and store them in a cool dry place such as an unheated porch.

The fall is also the best time to plant trees and shrubs. Garden centers sell saplings in the spring because that is when people have garden fever. Spring and summer are the worst times to plant a tree. It is just too dry and hot. The poor things don't have a chance.

I would encourage you to plant a couple of plum trees. We have three and are planting two more. We need more Greengauge plums on the island. They have big meaty sweet yellow fruit, twice the size of a prune plum. I used to pick them off the hedgerows in Worcestershire when I lived in England. The farmers there use many varieties of plums to edge their fields and I often saw the fruit lying thick on the ground. We can't use plums for hedging because of our deer, who consider a young fruit tree the greatest delicacy.

Marion berries are another must for the Denman garden. They are a hybrid blackberry with a huge fruit and a superior flavor. Plant some now but don't expect a crop next summer. You will get a crop the summer after but it will be worth the wait. This berry is a prolific producer requiring only a little care to prune and to tie in the new vines.