alternative to slug pellets?

babe_ruth_3

anyone know what I can use instead of slug pellets. I have a 7 months old dog and I'm assuming you can't use the slug pellets incase the dog eats them.
I really want to protect my delphiniums though. I tried the usual like beer and gravel around them last year but without success.

babyblooz

Get a frog! Seriously, we have a family of them that live under the decking. The babies like to creep up onto the top of the water feature and they are so tiny you can't believe it. And they are natural predators, so better than using nasty chemicals.

I find that my little froggy friends, and a saucer or two of sweetened beer, or in true moneysaving fashion the cheapest lager from the cheapest supermarket, manage to keep my garden more or less free of the slimy things.

Pretty disgusting tho, having to empty out all the dead bodies onto the border. I always wonder if the birdies are flying around half cut after gorging on the sozzled slugs!:rotfl:

Cacran

You know those geen washing up scrub pads? Cut them up into collars for your plant and place them around the stems. the slugs would not like crossing them ( at least that's what I read, have yet to try it out) You can re use tham time and time again. Just got myself a pack of them this week. Only 29p a pack of 4 and reckon I should get about 24 out of them.

kethry

broken eggshell also works, around the plant. saving up the eggshell would take a while though...

the other alternative is to do what my mother does. A few years back they had soil delivered to fill up a very high raised bed.. and it turned out to be absolutely chock full of slug/snail eggs, or whatever they grow from. mom tried everything, but in the end up what she did was every evening, around dusk, was to go out with the salt cellar and when she found a slug/snail, pour some salt on it. the result is spectacularly messy. you do have to be careful where you pour it though as pouring it on the earth is not good. it got to be quite the family joke: mom with the torch and the salt, slug hunting. but then.. mom loves her hostas.

HTH

keth
xx

dianadors

Slug pellets are vile - and if birds or frogs eat slugs that have eaten the pellets, they too die - so avoid them. My hubby and I go out every evening with a torch, small trowel and carrier bag and pick up all the slugs and snails (best done after a rain shower or when you have watered the garden). We then tie the carrier bag and put it in the wheelie bin. We have seen a drastic reduction in slugs over the last couple of years by doing this.

kscour

a couple of people I talked to last year swear by oats or oatmeal. I haven't tried it but it's meant to swell up in them or something. I was going to give it a go as the people who told me both have wonderful gardens.

teapot2

dianadors wrote:

My hubby and I go out every evening with a torch, small trowel and carrier bag and pick up all the slugs and snails (best done after a rain shower or when you have watered the garden). We then tie the carrier bag and put it in the wheelie bin. We have seen a drastic reduction in slugs over the last couple of years by doing this.

:rotfl: thought I was the only one creeping out in the dead of night to get those slugs. There are so many though I don't seem to have made a dent in the numbers so well done. Mind you I have to carry out my mission alone as no-one else will join me - they just sit indoors and laugh at me :rolleyes:

annie123

last year I tried the following:
Oatmeal.........did work but only for 48 hours, got damp after that
Egg shells...... didn't work
Copper strip.... didn't work
Grit................didn't work...neighbors cat liked it though!

Organic stuff from garden centre.....did work but needed to be reapplied every 2 days would have worked out at £10 per week!! : eek:

Plastic collars (old drinks bottles) around my sunflower with oil/Vaseline etc did work and will be repeating again this year, :j

I offered my DD and her friend 10p for everyone they found and collected.I was expecting 20-30. They asked me if I could afford it when they reached 200!!!! Keep going I said after we had renegotiated the price.!!
They got bored once they reached 500:eek: I couldn't believe how many I had,they looked disgusting in the bucket.
They were removed to the local woods.
This did make a huge dent and I followed up with nematodes to keep the numbers in check.

This year I will be sticking to protection for my sunflowers which I love and I will try the scouring pad idea, but other than that I am going to try to find things that they don’t eat!!

babe_ruth_3

erm yes, some interesting replies.

I tried the egg shells, gravel, beer etc which didn't work so that year I lost the delphiniums altogether but they bounced back the next year after I started with the slug pellets in January.

We also have an abundance of frogs too although I'm not sure why as we don't have a pond, but they still don't manage to keep the blighters from chewing on my delphiniums.

annie, I am interested in your remedy using plastic drinks bottle collars but I don't understand exactly what you do with them, could you elaborate?

cacran, I will also give the pan scrubs a go too!

thanks everyone for your replies :T

MrsTinks

Torch and bucket method for me We only get dead frogs sadly as the cats think they're fab things to play with the little sods!
Last year the garden was pretty much a write off as the turf had died... (don't ask!) but this year after the builders relaid our turf I actually have borders! :eek: so as well as some veg in the garden I am hoping to squeeze some flowers in. However they have to be hardy !!!!!!s lol the dog thinks flower beds are grassless so she can dig in them easier GRRRRRR

BlondeHeadOn

Maybe not as money saving as most of the responses above - - but I have had great results with the slug nemotodes. They worked out cheaper then slug pellets for me, as I only treated the garden twice in one year (April and September) and I had the most slug-free year ever. Completely safe for children and pets too.

Link to the ones I use below:

http://www.greengardener.co.uk/details.htm