Slug Gone Sheep Wool Pellets

[Scottishnewbie]

Has anyone used them and are they worth buying? Better still, can you make them yourself from sheep fleeces?

[Jungle Jane]

I'm interested in this,we're going to have a lot of slugs this year. The pellets are just compressed wool arent they? So they expand when wet. Found this info about using wool;

Wool fibres have very fine scales with small barbs on the tip called cuticle cells. Wool fibres is hygroscopic and this plus the sand and grit and vegetable matter that the sheep picks up naturally added to the potassium salts from the sweat glands of the sheep, absorb some of the slime from the slug’s foot causing irritation, resulting in the slug finding easier feeding methods.

Wool also holds twice its own weight in water so it acts as excellent mulch, a weed suppressant, a soil conditioner and slow release fertiliser!

[Coopers]

Ive yet to use them but i have just brought a buckets worth. I really do hope they are useful. I read many good reviews on the internet and i was brought into the many different benefits advertised also as jungle jane says.

[kris1960]

Got some for my daughter in Sheffield last year as she only has a small growing area- she had no more problems with her salad vegetables. Too expensive for allottment so I am encouraging toads and birds. They did a great job in the beds but i lost a lot in the greenhouse over the winter so might get some for there

[Scottishnewbie]

We have a small flock of sheep, so I think I will be making my own version this year...will report back

[Penellype]

I've experimented with these with mixed results. They have worked well as a barrier around young courgette plants, keeping the slugs away from the stems which I find are particularly vulnerable when first planted out. However when I tried them around young cabbages with the intention of keeping the slugs out of the hearts, they were a total failure. Copper rings (or rings of plastic bottle with copper tape stuck on) are much much better for cabbages. Even then I prefer to grow my cabbages in pots with a ring of copper tape around the whole pot, as often the outer leaves of a cabbage can touch the soil outside the ring, and then the slugs have a bridge.

[Greentea]

I have tried them but they stink to high heaven and they're too expensive to be used extensively

[seasprout]

Sheeps wool.

I tried these last year, they worked as a slug barrier for about 48 hours then the slugs slid over them and ate all my seedlings. These pellets also smell terrible, and I could smell them from across the garden.

Also Garden Which? Trailed these last year along with other slug barriers and found these pellits were the only barriers to cause a detriment to the plants by taking nitrogen from the plants they were supposed to protect. The plants turned a bit yellow.

I won't be using them again.

[Jungle Jane]

Also Garden Which? Trailed these last year along with other slug barriers and found these pellits were the only barriers to cause a detriment to the plants by taking nitrogen from the plants they were supposed to protect. The plants turned a bit yellow.

I can't find anything bad about using sheeps wool as a mulch online. It's used as a fertiliser,as it's high in nitrogen & phosphorus. I found a few articles that mention crop yield increase & it's a good weed suppressant, also it reduced the need for pesticides. Worth looking in to if you've got some sheep
http://www.pjoes.com/pdf/19.5/1083-1087.pdf

[JimS]

I've not used the pellets but have used raw wool.

Went into the field next door and collected a couple of bags of wool. I remember thinking "I should've worn gloves"

Got it back, emptied it out and teased out the wool till it was fairly thin and wispy.

Put round all my veggies and pretty much left it for a few days. I did make note of current slug damage so I could compare before and after.

The result? Not much difference really. The slugs still kept munching and it seemed the wool was not a deterrent at all.

Would the pellets make any difference do you think?

Perhaps washing the wool first would have helped, it was pretty manky.

Will I try it again? Probably not, but it is always worth experimenting methinks.

Jungle Jane - I read that paper you linked to. It was quite interesting. Though the wool has to be washed and buried under a layer for it to break down it seems. On the surface it just dries out quite quickly and doesn't look that good.

Perhaps I shall gather more and use it as a layer in my new beds Hmmm

[WPG]

I've tried the wool pellets for a couple of years - bit of a hit or mess, and especially ineffective around my sweet pea seedlings. Like Penellype, I've had better results with copper.

[Jungle Jane]

If you wash the fleece this would remove the salts,grit & sand that are said to irritate the slugs? Could use it either way. In that link they were concentrating more on crop yield.

[JimS]

If you wash the fleece this would remove the salts,grit & sand that are said to irritate the slugs? Could use it either way. In that link they were concentrating more on crop yield.

Jane, I'd be very surprised if the makers of the commercial pellets didn't put the wool through some sort of sanitising process, maybe steaming or something similar. They would also have to have some way of getting rid of the 'alien' stuff, like thistle, nettles and bits of bramble and twigs, as well as, ahem..waste product. All of which were in my collected sample. Sheep are messy creatures

Speaking of salts though. Wonder if it'd be possible to get the sheep to have a quick dip in the oggin, then shear them and dry the wool, keeping it saturated in salt?

I've seen cattle taking a dip in the sea but never sheep.. I suppose they'd need some sort of water-wings..

[marchogaeth]

Sheep don't like getting wet, the fleece weighs up to 4x what it does when it's dry. I tried fleece round plants and thought the slugs just found it a useful cover for attack. The thing about the pellets is they are compressed and don't you have to make a solid barrier? So the slugs can't avoid any part of it if they tried to cross. Far too expensive for me.

[Sylvan]

We have a small flock of sheep, so I think I will be making my own version this year...will report back

Did you try it in the end?