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What do you do about these on bare soil? Last night we collected 60 and this morning 30. Cant keep going out picking these. Bar ducks (be next on shopping list) and trying to get hedgehogs here anyone truly believe they have found a remedy?
Not so much a remedy as a balance. I have spells of disposing of hundreds and that does have an impact, although never eliminates them completely. If I plant out something new and tasty give an initial and very localised protection with organic slug pellets. Still loose some plants but keeps it to a tolerable level.
If it is newly cultivated I think it takes time to reach that balance, on an abandoned plot I have just taken on there are lots and I was shocked that I had forgotten how bad my first plot was initially.
I must say I’ve found that moving over to no-dig has reduced the pestilence of slugs and snails. They still exist (I found one munching on the healthiest lettuce I have ever grown, this morning), but in general they seem to do far less damage.
I tried beer traps two summers ago near Cara potatoes (which slugs seemed to prefer over other varieties) and near bean plants and it worked well, drowning dozens of the buggers over an eight week period. Dark ale in a plastic cup implanted into your growing bed and they migrate towards death unerringly…….you do need to replace the beer after heavy rain though!
I agree with Bluebell and Rhys. You won’t eliminate them completely and the no dig system does help to reduce their numbers.
I use a combination of methods, Beer Traps, Organic Slug Pellets, timber boards (as traps, they hide under theses} and finally Nemaslug.
The latter is very effective but can be a very expensive option depending on the size of your plot.
Going out at night and catching them is also helpful if a little messy! Personally I don’t bother with that.
One final point is to keep your plot tidy at all times, don’t leave debris lying around as they will take refuge under piles of stones and any other garden waste.Don.
Nothing happens without some well-directed effort: I was just tagged on Facebook with this encouraging comment.
“It’s been raining a lot since Monday night, and my garden is north-facing and thus a preferred habitat of SLUGS. (They seem to like crawling up the green mesh over my beds.) Charles Dowding has explained in his books that slugs preferrably eat decaying plant stuff and thus seem to have some clean-up function.
With that in mind, I planted mostly on dry days when a few more dry days were forecast. And I planted the plants deep enough for putting dry compost around them. The slugs don’t seem to like dry compost and the plants thus got a few days to recover from their transition from pot to soil and to orientate their roots into the soil. Result: In spite of a back problem that prevented me from slug chasing for a while, the slugs have left the bulk of my plants pretty much alone. :)”
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