how do you deal with slugs?

[peacegarden2024]

how do you deal with slugs?

I use a portable vacuum and beer traps.

[ameno]

Slug pellets, primarily. There are just so many of them where I am that I have little choice if I don't want them to eat all my veg seedlings.
Sometimes I also go around at dawn in the summer and kill any that I find. Two years ago I killed about 200 in one morning at my allotment. 3 days later, I killed at least a further 100. It seems to make little noticeable impact on the population.

[Bren In Pots]

For me watering in the early morning helps plus a light sprinkle of organic slug pellets.
It’s been so dry lately here there’s hardly any slug damage.

[Penellype]

I use a combination of things, the one that seems to work best (but not completely) is a copper ring (copper tape on a slice of plastic bottle) around the stem of the plant plus a sprinkling of Slug Gone wool pellets. The copper is less effective without the wool pellets and the wool pellets are much less effective without the copper, although they do make some difference. I use the copper rings for brassicas, cucumbers, courgettes, melons and sometimes beans and the wool pellets on their own for peas, lettuces, spinach, tomatoes etc. If I am growing in containers I put the copper tape round the container. I've also tried copper mesh, but this is not as good as the tape. I put my strawberry planters on copper sheets.

Usually in addition to this I apply nematodes in the spring, but they require fairly fussy conditions (not too cold, not too hot, not sunny, not too wet, not too dry) and the last 2 years have been impossibly dry. I've found this year that partly rotted horse manure from horses bedded on wood shavings has been a good deterrent, as it is quite rough, but that may simply be because it has been dry.

When it is wet I put down planks of wood and check underneath them each day and remove the slugs, and I also check under all the bricks that weigh down the nets and tunnel. I can also often find quite a few slugs wandering about after it has rained, and sometimes several in the water barrels. Keeping at it keeps them down, but new ones will always arrive from next door so it is a constant battle.

[annie8]

I dont worry about them too much, unless they do major damage. I am trying the garlic spray idea for the first time as one of my hostas is getting chewed.

[Right Shed Fred]

I find the most effective for me on my allotment is to simply go out with a bucket around dusk time when they start emerging, and just pop them into the bucket. And then dump contents of bucket far, far away from my seedlings.
i have a major onslaught of slugs and snails because of the low lying nature of my plot combined with waterlogged clay soil in winter (plus more weeds providing shady damp spots than I should have), and I notice a huge reduction in damage after an evening of slug harvesting.
(My allotment plot is so soggy in spring after the winter wetness that I routinely find frogs and newts. And I do not have a pond…)

[rary]

I use a garlic spray, I used to make up some nematodes for them but don't have enough to collect for that now, I also add a lot of seaweed to the garden, which I think reduces the number of slugs in the garden, no scientific evidence for that other than my lettuce and cabbage get very little damage

[Sweet savory]

This year because of the dry weather I have very little slug damage. Even managed to direct sow runner beans with good results whereas usually they are just devoured straight away. I use rings made from cut down plastic pots round newly planted plants which generally works 90% of the time. Also check daily for hidden sneaky ones under pots etc.