Slug damage - help please!

unhappy_shopper

I found that the slugs and snails in my garden - multitude of them - have damaged most of my flower bulbs and tender plants. I have liberally applied slug pellets in the flower beds, but would like to use Nemaslug for the edible vegetable beds. Are they effective?

If I water the flower beds with Nemaslug, (remember I have sprinkled slug pellets now) will it kill the nematodes and render them ineffective? How long do I have to wait before I apply Nemaslug?

Thanks in advance for your kind replies.

[Deleted User]

you only need a tiny sprinkle of slug pellets. I use maybe 8 in an 8 x 4 feet bed. I have also bought nemaslug and it is in the fridge for now. Tbh I would wait for the slug pellets to disappear first or pick as many out as you can. Nemaslug is effective for 6-7 weeks and is not cheap so, speaking for myself, I will be applying it in the middle of may which should take care of the slugs for much of the rest of the year as their breeding numbers will drop.

madjackslam

I think that you are better off applying slug pellets thinly. It's a mistake to think that more slug pellets=more kills. It doesn't.

Also, try other methods of attack - night-time trips with a torch; providing somewhere for slugs to hide under, then getting them; and beer traps, which you can make yourself with old bottles, and fermenting yeast - see here - http://www.slugoff.co.uk/killing-slugs/beer-trap.

I'm sorry that this doesn't answer your actual questions(!), but hopefully gives you other options.

stumpycat

Thanks for the link to the beer trap. I caught hundreds of slugs in mine last year and was going to have a go at making my own 'fake beer'. I have a dozen bottles of mango juice that I got at an out-of-date cheap shop (they taste of plastic!) so it will be truly money saving.
Last year I tried to find a cheap source of good slug beer - much to the amusement of the staff in Asda. Lager didn't seem to work so well, you need the darker stuff. I'm sure my other half's real ale would work wonders...

I_have_spoken

Yep, best bet with pellets is leave a few in specific locations such as under slate to attract the slugs/snails to those places. You can 'speed up' their elimination by looking for them with a torch on a damp evening & disposing of.

AFAIK the nematodes work most effectively once the soil is warmer, which it may be down south but I was giving it a few weeks yet in Scotland.

unhappy_shopper

Thanks everyone for your advice. I thought more-the-better with slug pellets - hence my liberal sprinkling. In the past 3 days, I have gathered and disposed off atleast 50-100 slugs and snails every day from the flower borders in the early morning. Still they seem to be appearing from under the soil - happily feasting on lily and other bulbs. I even found a few snails devouring the buds on newly planted bareroot fruit trees :-(

I'll be making a few beer-traps during the weekend to trap these slimies.

ed110220

Metaldehyde slug pellets seem to work best if you put them out before a dewy night or when there is a little rain expected, followed by drier weather.

If it's too wet the slugs and snails that have eaten them can sometimes still survive (it seems to work by dehydrating them).

I've tried the organic iron phosphate pellets which are meant to be more wildlife-friendly, but it's hard to tell how well they work as they cause the slugs or snails to hide before dying so there's not much evidence of dead molluscs, while metaldehyde makes them go all slimy and you find them near the pellets.

What I've been wondering is the 'strategy' of slug and snail control. Is the idea to try to reduce/eliminate the population in the whole garden (assuming a small-medium sized garden, about 10 x 15 m) by continuously baiting or just to try to protect sensitive plants with bait around them?

unhappy_shopper

ed110220 wrote: »

Metaldehyde slug pellets seem to work best if you put them out before a dewy night or when there is a little rain expected, followed by drier weather.

If it's too wet the slugs and snails that have eaten them can sometimes still survive (it seems to work by dehydrating them).

I've tried the organic iron phosphate pellets which are meant to be more wildlife-friendly, but it's hard to tell how well they work as they cause the slugs or snails to hide before dying so there's not much evidence of dead molluscs, while metaldehyde makes them go all slimy and you find them near the pellets.

What I've been wondering is the 'strategy' of slug and snail control. Is the idea to try to reduce/eliminate the population in the whole garden (assuming a small-medium sized garden, about 10 x 15 m) by continuously baiting or just to try to protect sensitive plants with bait around them?

I used the metaldehyde-based ones for the flower beds. For the vegetable beds, I'll be using the Nemaslug. My front and rear gardens are each the size you have mentioned. So, I may have to spend quite a lot to eradicate slugs and snails - I'll, therefore, try to use beer-traps in addition to the aforementioned methods.