Boris - friend of the slug

Black_Cat2

Well they eat them in France, maybe we're missing a trick? 

Ganga

Black_Cat2 said:

Well they eat them in France, maybe we're missing a trick? 

Only if you wish to speak French and have garlic breath .

twopenny

Am I the only one that actually likes snails? They have a facinating life cycle and are sort of cute.

Slugs on the other hand I really can't take to.

I don't dislike either beast, just what they do to my plants.

goldfinches

I agree with you @twopenny about snails, I've always wanted to see the business with the arrows being shot at one another and so on that Gerald Durrell described so vividly in My Family And Other Animals and hope that one day the BBC film unit will show it to me. Their shells are also beautiful too once you have a closer look. The other things I could do without altogether and they are the only garden animals I can't bear. Salt the lot of them I say and good riddance!

twopenny

I've got a feeling that there's a David Attenborough 'event' of the type you want, certainly the ones that hang from a tree.

I hatched snails for a class of children once. Soo cute and the way the shells grew and hardened.

And I'm not stopping to paint the shells before I send them on their travels to see if they come back. It could be devastating if I find the remains of the coloured shell in the hedgehog droppings.

Davesnave

The slug thing is an example of the home gardener being caught in the crossfire between agriculture and the government. There's vast quantities of pellets scattered by growers of potatoes, so the dozen or two protecting the edge of my polytunnel pale into insignificance against those. Farmers don't rate the ferric pellets and neither do I, but it's difficult to get hard data.

I'm reminded of the banning and unbanning of Asulox, a chemical used to control bracken, especially in upland areas. The government doesn't like it, but they haven't an alternative solution that works, so it's on and it's off. Meanwhile, in tractor sheds throughout the wilder parts of the UK, there's now probably enough of the stuff to keep folks going till the middle of the century!

Farway

Davesnave said:

I'm reminded of the banning and unbanning of Asulox, a chemical used to control bracken, especially in upland areas. The government doesn't like it, but they haven't an alternative solution that works, so it's on and it's off. Meanwhile, in tractor sheds throughout the wilder parts of the UK, there's now probably enough of the stuff to keep folks going till the middle of the century!

Had to Google it, Wiki says it's also an antiviral agent so with the way things are going expect it to be available on prescription any day now

Quick glug before you go out to spray your brambles

goldfinches

twopenny said:

I've got a feeling that there's a David Attenborough 'event' of the type you want, certainly the ones that hang from a tree.

I hatched snails for a class of children once. Soo cute and the way the shells grew and hardened.

And I'm not stopping to paint the shells before I send them on their travels to see if they come back. It could be devastating if I find the remains of the coloured shell in the hedgehog droppings.

If you mean the DA snippet about the orange ones hanging from a branch and making a sort of twirly flower round each other I recall that being slugs but I could be misremembering. 
I'd love to have seen the snail hatchlings, was it a kit you bought?
I do see what you mean about knowing Fuzzypeg has eaten a shell you particularly admired, could be interesting if you had any glow-in-the-dark paint though! The !!!!!! who chomped my delphiniums would never know what hit 'em.

twopenny

The snail hatchlings were a bunch of eggs found in a garden pot relocated to some earth, twigs and leaves in an old aquarium. The very tiny snails had transparent shells for a few days. As they darkened a bit the rim remained transparent and you could see the growth plates for each growth spurt. They survived quite happily in the aquarium. You could do it in a large jar. Remember to put clingfilm over the top and poke tiny holes in.

No glow in the dark paint needed. MrT leaves me bullet shaped presents on the lawn, black with bits of snail shell in them.

I tried to look up that snipet. You have no idea how many videos of slugs mating there are. Feeling queesy now