Keeping slugs off your strawberries

MothballsWallet

This is a tip I thought I'd share with you all for keeping slugs off your strawberries. It actually comes from my wife and she uses it in our garden.

When planting your strawberry plants, plant some garlic ones between them - slugs don't like the garlic and stay away from it (and the strawberries), and you don't get any taste of garlic on the strawberries when you pick them.

unrecordings

Slugs eat the garlic in my garden !

madjackslam

Slugs eat the garlic in my garden !

That's what I was thinking. I've heard of the recipe where you boil up garlic bulbs and then use the liquid as a slug deterrent spray. I was tempted to try it this year, but one of the things that the slugs love in my garden is alliums of all sorts.

I must confess that this year I've been using slug pellets, carefully, ie, scatteringly relatively few around plants, starting from Valentine's Day. It's been very effective, and has even solved some of the failings that I hadn't been attributing to slugs/snails.

Drachenfach

I've given up on my strawbs this year. The slugs have had the lot, despite pellets, eggshells, late night slug hunts- I don't know where they're coming from! Having eaten all the strawberries they're now moving on to my sprouting broccoli

I'm thinking of borrowing next door's ducks for an hour or so and seeing if they can make some inroads.

Next year I'll put the strawberries up in hanging baskets - lets see the slimy little beggars get up there!

BJV

We got so fed up we only plant strawberries in hanging baskets now. Now just the birds and the squirrels we have to worry about.

MothballsWallet

madjackslam wrote: »

That's what I was thinking. I've heard of the recipe where you boil up garlic bulbs and then use the liquid as a slug deterrent spray. I was tempted to try it this year, but one of the things that the slugs love in my garden is alliums of all sorts.

I must confess that this year I've been using slug pellets, carefully, ie, scatteringly relatively few around plants, starting from Valentine's Day. It's been very effective, and has even solved some of the failings that I hadn't been attributing to slugs/snails.

We've definitely got garlic bulbs planted between our strawberry plants (I say "we", but it's Mrs MothballsWallet who's the fruit & veg grower in our house as her family had an allotment where they grew lots of their own fruit & veg) and it is working.

The birds still get in and have some fruit, but no slugs.