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On Friday I planted out my Scarlet Runner Beans into the garden. I put down oyster shell all over the surrounding ground and set up beer traps. I have faithfully been on slug and snail patrol every few hours. Yesterday I noticed that a couple of leaves had been munched on so last night I crushed up eggshells as a further barrier to my succulent young plants. This morning every leaf looks like a doiley! Instead of preventing slugs and snails it seems that the eggshells have encouraged them! What else can I do? I am reluctantly considering slug pellets. Your views and advice would be appreciated.

Grow lots and lots of seedlings. Combined with regular slugacide missions, enough should make it through to give you a viable crop.

Wulf

Bite the bullet - use the pellets.

I must confess to having used Weedol and Roundup on the weeds this year - and am also considering the pellets for the increasing slug problem!

[hangs head in shame]

Batfink, I too have tried EVERYTHING including midnight removal missions, grapefruit shells, grit, sand you name it. I do put all the ones I find in my compost bin. BUT...I have sprinkled a few pellets, as little as I can get away with to save my little plants.

I know it's bad, I hang my head lower than you in shame!

There's no shame, guys. If it is a choice between nothing growing or a few slug pellets, when you have tried everything else, well I'd do it too! Don't forget the beer traps - they do seem to work.

How about (and this hurts) pouring beer over your weeds and let the slugs feast on your weeds?

The Chili Monster wrote:How about (and this hurts) pouring beer over your weeds and let the slugs feast on your weeds?

mmm... reverse sluggle physchology... interesting hypothesis. This evening I shall try and report back tomorrow! 8)

Tried bran?

Thanks for all the advice. I have succumbed to slug pellets - organic ones. They are supposed to be harmless to all other wildlife.

Well, the slug pellets ordinarily all have bad influence on some other living beings and on the soil. Nevertheless, I also used them when I had a wood garden where I couldn't go take a look each day and where they came from anywhere, so beer traps and the kind wouldn't work.

But I found out about another method by accident. I just didn't test it properly yet, because I don't have a garden. It's easy: you need some twigs with fresh leaves (not dry), like from cutting the hedgerow. You put them around your garden, in a thick line or in little heaps, depending on the amount that you've got (if you got lots, perhaps better make sure it works and put several concentric heap rows or lines).
In the night the snails will look for food in your garden. With the sun rising, they'll be scared and hide in the nearest cool place- under your twigs. Now, get up whenever you like (they won't leave during daytime, at least as long as they risk dying), get a couple of your chickens or simply collect the beasts by yourself. Make them die in a non- chemical way!

I tried some gel that I got from the local garden centre and it seems to be working. recently someone suggested using seaweed too, use it as a mulch, slugs hate it and it gives nutrients to your plants

I wondering if I may have made a minor discovery about slugs. You see, my tiny back garden is now mostly a raised bed box, plus a normal ground-level bed next to it, plus a pathway next to them about three feet wide. Thing is, between making the raised bed, cutting back some overgrowth, and digging the other bed, I've pretty well eliminated all the grass even in the places it still can grow. I didn't intend to do this, I've just given it a very hard time lately, and it's all disappeared for the moment.

And I haven't seen a single slug this year, despite some lovely succulent shoots for them.

Now it may be that my copper-topped bed (see thread elsewhere) is working miracles, but I think the truth is, that there just aren't any slugs about. And I suppose this may be because there isn't any grass for them to live and breed in.

Yes, grass does encourage them. That's the problem around here - even if there is no grass in the garden, there's fields full of the stuff all around. So there'll always be new slugs moving in from the sides.

Andy Hamilton wrote:Recently someone suggested using seaweed too, use it as a mulch, slugs hate it and it gives nutrients to your plants

That sounds like a good enough reason for a trip to the seaside!!!

I read that bracken leaves are something that slugs dislike and they won't cross it. So it's also recommended for mulching. Never tried it out yet...