Whats the best way to add slug pellet to the spud bed ??

[madmax]

Shirley has found a bird friendly slug pellet - they are blue in colour, but I cannot recall the name sorry Minty. Alternatively you can use cleaned and crushed egg shell. Slugs hate that apparently. So shirlthegirl43 says anyway!

Failing that small tubs with beer in them will attract slugs and hopefully keep them away from your spuds.

[Paul Wagland]

Or you could drink the beer, then you wouldn't mind so much about the slugs...

I'm a long way from being convinced about the 'bird friendly' and 'wildlife safe' pellets. They are, if nothing else, tested by starving captive birds and other animals to see if they'll eat them when desperate.

[smallblueplanet]

I WILL NOT BE USING SLUG PELLETS!!!!. I love the wildlife of the lottie and beyond and have been a bird lover for years...........Minty

Hey Minty, what kind of birds have you been loving in Alvo then?

[davefromthechipie]

Or you could drink the beer, then you wouldn't mind so much about the slugs...

I'm a long way from being convinced about the 'bird friendly' and 'wildlife safe' pellets. They are, if nothing else, tested by starving captive birds and other animals to see if they'll eat them when desperate.

I dont think thats the case ,its not the birds eating the pellets its the birds eating the posioned slugs thus posioning them

[Paul Wagland]

I'm afraid it definitely is the case, according to the press officer of a major chemical company who tried at length to get me to publicise his company's products in GYO. 'Starvation testing' where his own words. He might have meant testing to see if the animals ate the dead slugs, but it's immoral either way isn't it?

[Minty]

Shirley has found a bird friendly slug pellet - they are blue in colour, but I cannot recall the name sorry Minty. Alternatively you can use cleaned and crushed egg shell. Slugs hate that apparently. So shirlthegirl43 says anyway!
Yeah i had thought about that but it is quite a large area. By the way nice to meet you , i don`t think we have responded to each other yet.

Failing that small tubs with beer in them will attract slugs and hopefully keep them away from your spuds.

Or you could drink the beer, then you wouldn't mind so much about the slugs...

I'm a long way from being convinced about the 'bird friendly' and 'wildlife safe' pellets. They are, if nothing else, tested by starving captive birds and other animals to see if they'll eat them when desperate.

Got to admit i am am a little non convinced..

Hey Minty, what kind of birds have you been loving in Alvo then?

ALVO, HOW DARE YOU. Chellaston lad now

[smallblueplanet]

...ALVO, HOW DARE YOU. Chellaston lad now

Ooooh! Get you, Chello! Going up in the world ay?!

Where's your lottie then, I thought your map pin was in Alvo? Oh and you ignored the bit about the birds....ha!

[davefromthechipie]

I'm afraid it definitely is the case, according to the press officer of a major chemical company who tried at length to get me to publicise his company's products in GYO. 'Starvation testing' where his own words. He might have meant testing to see if the animals ate the dead slugs, but it's immoral either way isn't it?

The pellets i said is organic and have been passed for organic use , I dont know what testing they did ,And lets say worse case happened in testing >< If this comes mainstream think of all the animals it will save.(taking into account the massive market for toxic pellets )Yes i know that sounds out of sight out of mind , [immoral] yes maybe if thats what happened on this above product.Still intill anyone can say if this was tested by using crawl methods an not just by knowing the effects of this natural ingredient to animals .

[areia]

I'm not advocating this but I remember him even watering the area with ***** fluid and dropping mothballs in the gulleys!

***** fluid??!?!?!?!?! mothballs?!?!?!?!? how desperate do you have to be. omg dont think any moths will attack you while you sleep your immune now
tiz funny how we preach all about healthy eating and trying to do everything organic, but our grandfathers and dads, dun arf put some funny suspect stuff in the ground, didnt do us much harm really did it in the end. I thought my grandfather was totaly organic untill i read his notes, i will have to try and dig it out to share.

i hate killing anything in the garden but slugs make me crawl worms snails weevals im fine with, mind when my son was 3 he went through a sadistic faze of surrounding all slugs he could find with salt and watching what happens,
i hate using pellets because i feed the birds we have thrushes that eat them, and a hedgehog, they dont eat enough though i still have to go out at dusk to lift pots and drown em in stale beer (least they die happy)

[areia]

mind you i found an effective way for detering slugs from pots coat rim of pot with vasaline then spinkle salt on that, it last longer than any thing i have tried, another idea was copper rings round your veg hooked up to a battery but that doesnt work on root crops though and trying to find cheap or free copper around is like gold dust

[vegman]

Nematodes

Bit of a lecture this but.....
Nematodes are microscopic worms that occur naturally in the soil and are parasitic to slugs [not snails]. A product called "Nemaslug" exists on the market which is a packet of such worms which you 'water' onto the soil to increase the natural population. This stuff is not usually stocked at garden centres but is available in webshops and catalogues [Organic Gardening Catalogue] cos it needs to be delivered mail order from the manufacturer and has a limited shelf life.

This stuff works, is not harmful to kids, pets or wildlife and isnt bothered by rain. You apply it twice and then thats it.

Either water with a watering can or for larger areas I use a sprayer from "superspray" which holds the 'gloop' and disolves as you spray. see Superspray The Best Hose Accessory you'll ever own the Nemaslug comes in two sizes and costs about £5 to £10 depending and the Superspray costs about £10 I recall. but you can use this sprayer for all kinds of jobs.

[spiderpig]

I am going to go the beer trap route this year rather than slug pellets. However last year I also resorted to "relocating" the slugs I caught with a short catapult motion on the hand trowel!! I have a school playing field adjacent to my garden and if the little blighters then actually made it through the boundary hedge and fence back into my garden,then fair play to them!

[spud57]

[This stuff works, is not harmful to kids, pets or wildlife and isnt bothered by rain. You apply it twice and then thats it.

.[/QUOTE]

When is the best time to apply it? Marshalls say they are not despatching til mid APril, but early potatoes will be planted before then!

[shirlthegirl43]

Further to Madmax's post, I use Growing Success pellets (it says on the packet that they are not harmful to hogs or birds) in conjunction with crushed eggshells. I have not seen any evidence of dead slugs as apparently the product makes them go underground to die. None of the yikky slimy mess the old fashioned pellets cause with a dried out slug at the end of the trail. Also, they are rain resistant. I don't get nearly as much slug damage as I used to and only use about a pack of the pellets a year. I love the idea of the slug trap and once Madmax is home all the time to empty them every morning, I will change to those but I just couldn't do it - wuss that I am

[Paul Wagland]

Slightly off-topic, but did I read our common snail was introduced by the Romans as an edible species? It could be that I dreamed it....

Anyway, if they are edible... what about slugs?