To feel sorry for the slugs?

[GreenSlide]

I'm a member of a few gardening pages, one of which makes a point of not allowing comments about killing insects or other creatures, but people still do it. There are awful comments from people who drown slugs in beer, use slug pellets, I've even seen people saying they go out at night to hunt them and cut them in half with scissors

It's not that I'm a fan of slugs, I get how annoying it is to lose plants to them (they ate my dahlias last year and a whole crop of kohl rabi) but there are other ways to deter them that aren't cruel. The main one being just don't grow things that slugs like to eat.

I know there are bigger issues in the world right now, and I do have plenty of other things to worry about! But AIBU to also care about the slugs?

I am not a fan of slugs.. but I explicitly remember dowsing one in salt when I was a child. It was the most horrifying death I have seen.

@IFoundMyselfInThisBar
It's twat.
If you're going to be insulting do it properly, we are all grown- ups.
Op asked, hardly attention seeking to answer the question, wtf?

I can’t bear to kill them so I only plant things they won’t touch

I’ve read it all now.

@Carolina24

Yanbu. All creatures great and small have their place and deserve to be left alone to get on with things.

So a human can't destroy a bevears dam but a slug can destroy a humans crop?

Seems unfair

@Swistle

How may I ask do those of you who think slugs deserve to live, deal with headlice? Fleas and ticks on your pets? When does a creature become so disgusting it deserves to die just because you deem it irritating /disgusting enough?

I'm a happy slug slayer BTW.

I'd bet the line is "when it affects me personally"

@Iknowtheanswer

I feel like that with slugs and snails. Last year I used to go out after dark with a torch, pick them up and take them to a nearby wood in a bucket

I love this 😊

Having nature take its course such as not growing certain things, but I agree with the OP that cutting in half or drowning is not acceptable.

@Wickstead Nice to see another hedgehog fan on here 👍

Come on OP, where do you stand on head lice?

I have no issue with murdering slugs and snails. They destroy everything I work hard to grow at my allotment.

I think the bottom line is that most people are fine with 'murdering' living things as long as they don't have to get their hands dirty or as it suits their agenda, as PPs have alluded to.

Even if you eat organic and don't eat meat, your food has still been treated with pesticides and insecticides. The reality is that global food security relies on them.

People also mostly don't realise how much work goes into growing things, so it is extremely frustrating to have predators devour your crop.
Very few people are self-sufficient, so like it or not, we are all a bunch of murderers in some way or another!

@BewareTheBeardedDragon

I feel this is appropriate to leave here

(I mostly put mine on the compost heap but I don't disagree with killing them - humans would starve if we tried to share all our crops with the pests that also want to eat them and anyone who eats anything from a shop is complicit in the killing of food pests so...)

I have rabbits and use a line of salt to deter them. I found a fecking huge striped one the other night.

YANBU. They annoy me because they have an appetite for expensive plants but I find them quite cute. I like their ridges and silvery trails. They are part of the garden and have every right to live there.

@Oysterbabe

Come on OP, where do you stand on head lice?

I have no issue with murdering slugs and snails. They destroy everything I work hard to grow at my allotment.

Of course we need to kill pests where necessary, and slugs are pests. But as I said in my OP and as others have said too, there are no kill ways of dealing with slugs that do work.

While some people here are happy to have their veg patches bare, I spend lots of time and money on mine so no way in hell am I just forfeiting it. Even my birds here refuse to eat thst slimy bastards and I have a massive flock and other couples (wood pigeons come in a couple, so cute). Funnily snails don't touch my stuff. We are friends😐

Because of the way humans and animals change the nature around them (everyone and everything has some effect on it), sometimes pests thrive, or even non pests, and population has to be controlled somehow otherwise it's a disaster.

If people wouldn't kill the slugs, we would all be drowning in them. Just make sure you don't use pellets. They affect other creatures.

@Wickstead

Hedgehogs only eat slugs if their preferred food source (caterpillars, beetles etc) aren’t available.

When they do, they often get potentially fatal lungworm.

Don’t kid yourself you’re helping the hogs by tortuously cutting up animals (which they wouldn’t need anyway. Their teeth are just fine).

You’re better off buying Tesco own brand kitten food

The utter irony of suggesting it is wrong to kill slugs and in the same post recommending buying car food. Which is made of... dead animals?!? Have you ever seen inside a factory farm or a badly run slaughterhouse (of which there are many)?

@purplebagladylovesgin

My mum is a companion planter and uses organic ancient methods.

She plants sacrificial crops for slugs, who then eat less of the things she wants to grow. The slugs in turn are food for other wildlife and as it's all organic nothing suffers.

I don't disagree with this approach but to suggest that nothing suffer in nature is preposterous and naive.

@SchrodingersImmigrant

While some people here are happy to have their veg patches bare, I spend lots of time and money on mine so no way in hell am I just forfeiting it. Even my birds here refuse to eat thst slimy bastards and I have a massive flock and other couples (wood pigeons come in a couple, so cute). Funnily snails don't touch my stuff. We are friends😐

Because of the way humans and animals change the nature around them (everyone and everything has some effect on it), sometimes pests thrive, or even non pests, and population has to be controlled somehow otherwise it's a disaster.

If people wouldn't kill the slugs, we would all be drowning in them. Just make sure you don't use pellets. They affect other creatures.

The thing is, the average garden has something like 20,000 slugs so I don't think cutting a few in half every evening is really making a massive difference to the population. It just seems unnecessarily cruel.

I had good success last year keeping them away from some of my crops by planting herbs they didn't like, and a coincidentally placed catmint seemed to ward them off too. I did lose other plants though before o started trying different things. It takes a combination of efforts to deter them without killing them.

@GreenSlide which herbs have you found effective please?

Well I am done with the effort and tapes and losing plants. So I am a mass murderer with biological weapons.
Imagine if I let them bastards happily make as many babies as they wnated to. I would be deowning in them because they seem to be coming in from neighbours' gardens for my veg and fruit.
Unfortunately the local cats got rid of my frogs so... With lack of natural predators here, nature needs a bit of help.
Nematodes for life✌️

My allotment actually has a lot of slow worms that live under the area where I store sheets of black plastic. I think they help. The slugs would still destroy everything if I left them to it.

@SchrodingersImmigrant Can you talk me through nematodes. Is it worth treating soil pre planting?

I would love slow worms! (Ha, in native language we call them blind worms or something pike ghat). But I am afraid local cats are making sure nothing like them can live here🙄
I used to have frogs too. Blackbirds aren't interested in slugs, they are after my fat earthworms. No bird help here lol

My parents use slug pellets in their garden for their flowers and at their allotment for their veg. I have talked to them about the effects of pellets on other animals like birds and hedgehogs but they don't care. They say there is no other way. Now I have learnt about nematodes I will suggest that to them and hope they go for it.

[quote slidingdrawers]@SchrodingersImmigrant Can you talk me through nematodes. Is it worth treating soil pre planting? [/quote]
I treat late March or early april first, depending on temperatures. It can't drop below 5 even at night. Then in June later or so I do another and then another in Sept to infect them before winter. Pack says 6 weeks between treatments, but I found that i had great results even if I did it 2-3 months apart. It won't eradicate them, that's absolutely impossible, but it helps with overpopulation.