Slugs destroying cabbages - continue or start again?

[catgirl]

Hi everyone,

Last summer I sowed some Durham cabbage for harvesting this spring. However my back garden is slug paradise due to the squishy, damp clay soil in winter and my poor plants have been mercilessly attacked. It's now getting to a stage where I'm not sure whether to even let them continue to grow. So many of the leaves have been eaten that I don't even know whether anything edible will come out of these plants! It's my first time growing them so any opinions as to whether to let them grow for a bit longer or just rip them out and make space for new plants would be appreciated. See photos. I'm also starting to worry that they haven't grown very much at all - the largest plant looks okay but the smaller ones look like they're barely surviving, let alone growing.

Also, what with the new growing season coming up I'm looking for new ways to try and stop the slugs eating everything in my garden. I don't like killing anything if I can help it and do have cats, so I'm not keen on using slug pellets. I came across these Slug Gone pellets though, and they look promising. But before I spend money on something that might not be effective, have any of you used these before?

Thanks!

[rustylady]

They won't grow much during the Winter, the idea is they stand during the cold weather and grow quickly come Spring.

Slug pellets do work, but need to be used sparingly.

[Martin H]

Your cabbages should be able to shrug off the attack. Keep after the slugs by your preferred method, give the cabbages a bit of a feed now they are starting to grow again, look forward to a nice harvest in a couple of months.

[WendyC]

It only looks like the outside leaves which you'll discard anyway. Clear away any dead leaves where slugs can hide. Give the cabbages a feed with something like pelleted chicken manure and when the weather warms they'll be away and shrugging off the slug attack.

[mothhawk]

I'm going to try bran this year. Supposedly it has a desiccating effect and kills them that way. Whether that's from eating it or crawling across it, I'm not sure, but it's worth a go, if you can get it from a pet shop or feed merchant, at about £7 for 20kg, rather than from a health food shop at £7 for 1kg!

Here's some other ideas too.

[Penellype]

I tried the slug gone pellets (pelleted sheeps wool) a couple of years ago, and I can't say I was particularly impressed. I used them around courgettes, which were not eaten at all by slugs, and cabbages, which were badly eaten regardless and had slugs chomping away at the middles of the hearts.

The method I now use for brassicas if I am planting them in soil is to cut rings from large plastic bottles and put a band of copper tape round them, then push these over the plants when I plant them out. Sometimes the lower leaves flop down and then the slugs get in anyway, but I have had reasonable success with thiis for broccoli, when unprotected plants were literally skeletonized. I usually grow my cabbages in 18" pots (4 to a pot for small cabbages) with a band of copper tape around and this seems quite effective.

[Bigmallly]

Try either beer traps or netting. They don't look too bad as there is plenty of growth still to go on.

[Veggielot]

You could do both, start off some replacement in pots and see what your existing ones are like when the newones are ready for planting out. That way you have replacements ready if you need them

You can get pet friendly slug pellets which are also organic, unfortunately can't remember the make and tbey are down my plot. I did get them from my local garden centre so are probably widely available.

[bario1]

I'd be chuffed if my cabbages looked anything like as good as yours Catgirl! Pigeons reduced mine to bones and they don't look like recovering.

[catgirl]

Thanks Bario1, it's my first year of growing them so I have no idea whether they're doing what they're supposed to be doing! Luckily there are very few pigeons around here, though why I do not know. My garden backs on to a couple of miles of an overgrown sort of park, so I would have expected masses of them. It must be the foxes keeping them all away! Hopefully your cabbages will recover eventually and the pigeons will leave them alone!

[chris]

Nematodes... When the ground is warm enough


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