Slugs & Snails

[chasingmytail]

Last night we collected 57, this morning 30. What is everyone else doing? I think ducks are on the next shopping list. Sadly no hedgehogs around this farmland. I dont want to be wasting time on myths and def not putting down pellets. Anyone recommend anything else? Ta

[craftymarie]

I've got frogs in the garden that love to eat them (I regularly find dead slugs floating in the frog water bowls in the morning) and we also find quite a few broken snail shells from visiting song thrushes. There must be thousands of them though so not an easy thing to keep on top of.

I did notice that slugs don't seem to love traveling over our gravel drive. Did an experiment last year with some veg containers out on the grass and some left out on the gravel. The ones on the gravel had very few slug issues and I only picked a few out. Am planning to eventually gravel all around the raised beds which might help keep numbers down.

I think someone did an experiment on TV once testing out loads of different ways to deter slugs - beer, copper tape etc. Don't think anything was all that effective from what I remember. Even though they are a pain - I do think they're blooming clever. Often been amazed just how far they seem to travel and where they hide themselves ready to munch in the evening I simply can't hate anything that enjoys veg as much as I do

[Baldy]

Have a look at cadalot's pop bottle slug traps. You can use either beer or pellets. Keeps the rain off and stops the slugs escaping. I'd link to a picture but can't get my head around the mobile phone I'm using...

Balders

[Penellype]

I use a combination of nematodes and copper tape round pots or rings of pop bottles with copper tape round individual stems eg on broccoli. Its not perfect but vastly better than nothing.

[SaraJH]

Midlands Today had an article this evening on slugs being monsters this year

Our defence is deep 10mm gravel around our raised beds.

Good luck to everybody who is fighting these buggers, they are so yucky.

[Ms-T]

cadalot's pop bottle slug traps, do work ,I got them all round the garden.work on snails too.

[muddled]

I've used nematodes for the first time this year (too early to know if they've worked)
and I make slug pubs,
I mulch with woodchips,
I make toad habitats (boggy areas with rotten logs on top and tall grass)
Use copper tape and/copper slip around pots
make collers for seedlings out of pop bottles
and I go out like a nutter with a head torch and pair of chopsticks after rain to pick the slimies up and dump them in a tub of salt water.

I take a multi agency approach to slug control

[PyreneesPlot]

Keep collecting - in my first few years here it was several hundreds every single night from early spring (over 13,000 one year) but now I go out maybe once or twice a week May-July and collect less than a hundred.
I mulch with grass clippings and have grass paths around my beds which I cut at least once a week and the slugs (rarely snails as I guess most of them have been eaten by the neighbours )are usually eating the softer decaying grass rather than the plants.
I have old copper central heating pipe cut into rings which goes over the more tasty young plants.
Encourage predators - watch for ground beetles falling into the beer traps as they are good slug munchers.
I thought I would never win the battle as I would lose three quarters of everything to start with and am lucky that my veg plot is right outside so a quick evening slug hunt is no bother.
If only moles were as easy ...

[jackarmy]

Modified American anti slug device

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=75DMf-OA1ko

[Knight of Albion]

I water in the morning, rather than in the evening. Nothing else in the garden.

As for the greenhouse, I go out late evening and remove any slugs and snails and put them, unharmed, in the hedge.

[Chippy Minton]

If you have a fire wood ash seems to work at least for seedlings. Slugs don't like it, it clogs them up. Lets the plants get big enough for the pigeons to eat

[Marb67]

I am finding them everywhere so go out at night, collect them up and put them in compost bin and take them out to the country lanes the next day and let them go as they won't do any damage there. It's a myth that they are homing. I just can't kill them because at the end of the day they are living creatures trying to survive. Sometimes I am mortified when I accidently step on a snail and have to kill it quick if I do. I even stepped on a tiny frog which seemed dead but later picked up and disappeared next day.

My new raised beds on the gravel paths don't seem to have any so it must help. It also does my heart good to see a lot of frogs out and about hunting in the garden. A pond is def one of the best things I put in. My sweet peas seem to be suffering the most as they all seem to make a bee line for them despite coffee granules and crushed egg shells which don't seem that effective in wet weather at least. Dry weather seems more of a hazard to them.

[Thelma Sanders]

It's a myth that they are homing.

It's not a myth, but take them far enough away and they won't return.

BBC - Radio 4 - So You Want To Be A Scientist? - The Experiments - Homing Snails Experiment - Results - Ruth Brooks

[muddled]

Excellent link Thelma!

We did something similar...a blob of nail varnish on snail shells....moved the snails, well, lobbed 'em over the fence to the alley ...-and they did come back.

Actually, we found quite a lot of empty marked shells. Not sure if the dayglo pink nailvarnish attracted predators or if the snails were so offended by the colour they moved out but it was a fun 'hexpewiment' for my quirky five year old

[Cadalot]

Have a look at cadalot's pop bottle slug traps. You can use either beer or pellets. Keeps the rain off and stops the slugs escaping. I'd link to a picture but can't get my head around the mobile phone I'm using...

Balders

The Slug traps were featured in an allotment update video but I have just created a cut down version of the video and taken out all the non slug trap material enjoy