Experiments with slug control

My first line of defence against slugs and snails has been slug pellets, but these can be very dangerous to all manner of good and beneficial visitors to our garden such as birds and hedgehogs, as well as pets. In recent years, therefore, I only use the Growing Success pellets, which are meant to be harmless to all but slugs and snails. However, they do dissolve when it rains and I often forget to replace them. One tub lasts me a long time, therefore.

As a more long-lasting measure I have been using slug pubs and now have 9 of these dotted about the vegetable patch. Apparently they can be unpleasant to empty as they should contain a mixture of dead slugs and whatever liquid you used to lure the unsuspecting creatures to their
death. However, by the time I remember to empty them and top up the bait the traps are usually fairly dry and it's hard to tell if there were ever any slugs in there. Moreover the slug pub does not discriminate between fat ugly slugs and snails and those pretty little snails with the yellow and brown striped shells. I was even watching a slug the other day and was surprised how gracefully it moved. Perhaps we should rethink our attitude to molluscs.


Here are two of the three new slug traps for the flowerbed, which I've just got from the Organic Gardening catalogue.


However, like all but one of my 12 traps around the garden, they were empty of slugs.


They tend to collect dead woodlice instead. I did read somewhere you should put a stick in them if they are at or near ground level so black beetles can climb out if they fall in by accident.

















However, more for practical reasons than sentimental concern for slugs and snails, I have just invested in some other types of slug control that are not harmful to molluscs but also won't all need replacing too often.

I've bought a few large copper rings last year, so this year thought I'd buy a mixture of large and small. After the recent heavy rain I noticed all but two of the lettuce seedlings that were just showing through had disappeared, so two small rings have been place around those two small survivors and they are slowly getting bigger.




The advantage of copper rings is that once you've bought them they can be reused and should last for years, changing from bright copper colour to a more muted brown and eventually to an attractive verdegris. However, the drawback is that these rings only work while the plant has no overhanging leaves, as can be seen by the damage caused to this (almost non-existent) lupin inside the ring:


On Sunday I gave it some First Aid treatment, mulching it with nutrient enriched organic compost and watering it before scattering slug pellets around. If you scatter them too close together this will just keep the slugs away until a better opportunity arises for them to pounce. On the other hand a light scattering should lure them to have a fatal taste.







I have also put copper tape on a couple of pots, but again, this is useless once a leaf forms a bridge or abseiling rope for adventurous slugs and snails.

















My answer to this problem, hopefully, is a felty mat, which includes some copper in its fabric. I think this might be the answer for my pots, but it is fairly narrow, so would need more than one length for wider ones and it would prove expensive for anyone who had a lot of pots they wanted to protect.

Something else I am trying is wool pellets, which are not only meant to deter slugs and snails, but also form a mulch around the plants. It looks like it could work, but there are signs that some birds might consider this useful nesting material.

Here it has been put on a newly planted thyme, which I was surprised slugs or snails would attack, but it may be weakened by a lack of water. It seems to need more aftercare than I've been giving it as it was planted later than the other thymes I put in the rockery, which are now doing nicely and in bloom. However it is also in a shadier part, but not so shady.




All these forms of slug control can be obtained from the Organic Gardening catalogue.