snails

Mr_Proctalgia

I carpet bombed my flower bed with slug pellets and a little salt earlier this year when stuff was just starting to show through. There were dead slugs and snails everywhere, I haven't had a thing eaten since and not needed anymore pellets yet. The Delphs, Hostas and Bussie Lizzies are all pristine and flowering nicely.

I did notice the other evening after a shower that the huge slugs were out on the pavement breeding in a pool of slime, so I salted the b***ers. That gave them great send off and stopped a few more little ones appearing later. I find it helps a lot if you don,t provide shelters for the sods, so no rocks, slabs or plant pots in my border. I did an experiment last year and cocoa shell seems to help - It also smells wonderful and improves your soil.

HTH

Steel_2

When I first moved to this house with it's big garden I used to use organic methods like beer, salt, gravel and copper bands. There were so many slugs and snails the live ones were using the bodies of the dead to climb over and shred my plants. I was out picking up between 80 - 100 every night around the greenhouse and veg beds and I wasn't even making a dent in the population.

In desperation I resorted to pellets and have them under control now, although for the beds where I grow fruit and veg I use Nemaslug biological control. Trouble is, it's too expensive for me to use all over the garden every six weeks.

One thing you all might be interested in knowing is that I recently discovered numerous mini slug nurseries underneath the leaves of the plantain weeds that were growing in my lawn. I went out there to dig the weeds up by hand and found tons of eggs underneath each one.....

simgranny

Has anyone tried using bran? I've read that they prefer eating it to your plants and that it kills them. I've had to resort to growing my lettuces in hanging baskets (they don't seem to be able to climb along the chains) because the slugs are wiping out nearly everything that I plant in the ground .

I'm going to try this bran thing before I plant out anything else - There seem to be far more slugs around this year than usual.

Lee_Francis

I am constantly at war with pests and diseases in my garden.

I also planted delphinium for the first time two years ago, and they were just gobbled slobbered and munched by slugs and I was left with leaf stumps. They also eat every single basil plant every year - have given up on them as I'm not sure about spraying edible stuff.
So last year I was advised to get some slug spray, http://www.doff.co.uk/shopping/shopexd.asp?id=19, (find info at) and I got 2 from Homebrands. Cannot remember the price, but it was very good value, it was either 99p or £1.99. Then this spring, I sprayed the ground on and around where the delphinium should come out. Then as the leaves came out, tied them up to the stake. This year I have 4 5ft tall, two in electric blue flower, the other two not in flower yet.

If you don't mind using the spray, try it - it's worked for me.
( I don't know if it's true, but I've heard that the pellets can be eaten by birds and are not good for them. So I didn't go down the pellett route )

Lee

newMS

thank you everyone. got toget something to control them i hate slugs

MrsB2100

I've my delphiniums munched by the evil little blighters this year too. And I ordered some of the plug plants ... thought I'd be able to defend them as they grew - I had 6 plants ... now it looks like I have one - but it's not evening yet. I tried egg shells, but they werent worried by that. I reckon the little devils have hobnail boots on! I wont use pellets, because we have a hedgehog family who come and visit. I guess they're being well fed elsewhere as they're not interested in the free buffet in my garden this year! Oh well, there's always next year ... maybe I'll find out what'll kill the blighters by then!

Becles

Has anyone else noticed there are masses of snails around this year?

The man next door doesn't really do gardening, just keeps the place tidy. He's got this shrub under his front window, which is dense and fast growing and it appears to be infested with snail. My window is floorlength and the snails crawl out of the shrub, onto my window ledge and up my front window - uurrgggh! It's rained during the night, and I've counted 9 on the window already.

We've just redone our front garden and planted some new plants, and I'm worried about the snails eating them. What is the best way of keeping them off my garden and off the window? Needs to be a pet friendly method, as we have dogs and also child friendly.

A_Clock

You could try the "Growing Success" pellets, you can get them in wilko or B&Q.

http://www.growingsuccess.org.uk/detail.asp?ID=Advanced+Slug+Killer&cat=Slug_Control

Dont get the granules one, they dont last long enough!

jimbo_the_jetset

One I have heard of, but not yet tried is to bury a jar into the ground so the top of the jar is level with the ground and put in about an inch of beer.

Hepcat

Beer traps are very effective, however cleaning out the horrible sludge inside is not pleasant!

Interesting to note that slugs and snails don't seem to mind what sort of beer or what % alcohol, in our test the low alcohol cheapy (Tesco value) was just as effective as any of the others.