bastard slugs are eating EVERYTHING this year! what won't they eat?

[cormsilkye]

bastard slugs and I suspect the snails are having a go as well
what plants do slugs not like to eat? I like cottage garden flowery types if that helps

We have massive worms, and many of them. How do I tell if they're nemotodes, what do they look like? Sometimes I see clusters of little reddish wormy things - would that be nemotodes?

Jux I'm pretty sure that nematodes are microscopic, anyway the slug-eating ones we're all interested in, are. Maybe the little reddish wormy things are darling little baby worms...

If they're in a compost heap, thin red worms are brandling worms.
Any worm big enough to see won't be a slug eater, unfortunately.

They're just in the earth, not in the compost, but how do worms eat slugs if they're so small you can't see them?

if you have red worms in the soil, you may have a leaking drain or sewer.

Red worms are always found round cracked soil pipes. I wonder what they eat that makes them so fit and wriggly....

Jux - the nematodes don't eat the slugs. Apparently they get inside, release bacteria which kill the slug and then happily reproduce.

While checking that I found this - a method to breed your own nematodes. You've got to really hate slugs to to this, I reckon!

Disposal method - jug of hot soapy (dishwashing soap) water, dump slug in, slug death almost instantaneous. Dispose of water. Over the back fence in my case, into an area of deadfall land.

So far the courgettes in my veg box are still with us, not sure if it's the copper tape, porridge oats or coffee grounds that's doing the trick.

I've always just flung slugs and snails over our back fence (it's a field so flung with force!) BUT the other evening I picked up a GIANT slug with a child's spade and flung/flicked the spade only to somehow have the slug fling back at me and land on my bare chest it was then the stuff of nightmares as I did a crazy scream dance back to the house literally EVERYWHERE I looked was slugs!! I have never seen so many slugs as this year but still struggle with actually killing them! Thought I was being really brave the other night by pouring beer on 1 but nothing happened! I literally have nothing left in my veg patch bastards!

You know that snails have a homing instinct and come back don't you? A woman did tests, marked her snails with nail varnish and put some over the wall, put some somewhere further away and drove some even further away. I can't remember how far you have to dump them in order for them to be lost and not come back, though. She won the Amateur Scientist of the Year Award. She didn't test slugs, as far as I know; might be a bit hard to mark them.....

Boke! Looks like I'm going to have to grow some balls (seeing as the snail/slug population have put a stop to my growing anything else) and kill the bastards!!

From what I can find out, snails need to be taken at least 100 metres away before they get lost.

Have fun herding your snails!

I planted several Marigolds ONCE, and they were rapidly devoured by slugs, and as I don't like killing anything that is not a danger to me, I decided never to plant them again, and had no more trouble with slugs. They are not attracted to bedding begonias

Forgot, I did use slug pellets ONCE, but felt so ashamed of myself at the massacre and how they must have suffered, and felt sick at all the mangled, distorted corpses that I didn't use it again. I don't have a lot of bedding/annual plants, most of mine are perrenials, and they don't eat them either. But gave up on my beautiful lilies as were skeletonised from the disgusting red beetle larvae

Had fewer slugs and snails round containers on patio area after using old coffee-grounds, then plants started to die 2/3 years later,most recovering after being transplanted to different area - I don't think coffee's good for plants. I plan to make a raised bed in this area and return to using bran or oats, with cardboard boxes left overnight on any bare soil - lots of slugs underneath every morning and eventually less.

Coffee grounds, oats and copper tape didn't even rescue my lettuce seedlings but I have just found out purely by accident (thanks to 18mo DD's obsession with putting stuff through the catflap) that cat biscuits are irresistible to slugs so if anyone's looking for something to use as bait then I recommend it. Got about 15 of the buggers without even having to go looking for them.