Arrrgggggh, SLUGS ! Child safe solutions please.

[WoodenPegs]

Just that really ... What can I use on them that is child safe? I can just see all my beautiful little baby plants being eaten alive.
Unforunately going on slug patrol each evening isn't an option, or I'd be out there lying in wait!

In my experience anything that is child safe is also slug safe. Sorry, not what you wanted to hear.

On the RHS podcast someone suggested porage oats - it dries them out and kills them off. Never tried it myself but it sounds like it might work for you?

copper bands around your tasty morsels is supposed to be a tried and tested remedy. (Pots banded with copper). When my DD was younger, she was taught not to touch them and she didn't and was told to help mummy by picking up the snails and put them in the bucket for her. I didn't have an issue with slugs really, but snails were another matter. If your garden has lots of hidden niches where snails and slugs can hide, then you'll always have them, I'm afraid. Also, salt is handy too in dry weather, but not very practical nor good for the soil.

And the most obvious trick is stale beer in a jar sunken in the ground which I presumed you've tried...

What plants are being eaten and where are they? Too soon to put lots of stuff out yet - I grow things on so that they are bigger and less tasty to the slugs once they get outdoors.

I have lots of veg growing. The cabbages are the ones that are really suffering.

Interesting about the oats. I may try an oats / salty combination.

Everything is in a huge raised bed, so no possibikity of using copper strips.

Can't use beer, but perhaps marmite/yeast or sugar water would work?

One year I grew strawberries and put slug pellets down and then covered the entire bed with bark chippings. It worked a treat.

I have tried all the other options - beer, salt bird friendly pellets, but they just don't work.

Oh, and grapefruit halves, which didn't work either.

Hens. Egg shells. Granule things that you buy.

Oats don't seem to be working so far, egg shells next ...

When I had my allotment, I used eggshell but they were baked first and then crushed fine. It worked very well on the plot, but they didn't work at home though.

The most successful thing I tried was to attract them rather than keep them away - and then squish the buggers.

Nice, tempting saucers to hide under, with water to keep cool in summer, followed by a highly efficient midday massacre.

Nemaslug is what you need. It's safe, it only affects slugs, it won't poison birds or anything else that eats slugs. I had a dreadful slug problem at my last home and this worked. (Actually, I didn't have much of a slug problem until a new neighbour moved in and put down slug pellets which seemed to attract the bastards from miles around.)

Got to ask this; why can't you use beer?

I would second nematodes- you wanted them in, about now is a good time. Made a huge difference to our raised bed. Order online , they need to be refrigerated unless you use them straight away, so order for when you will be in. Got ours from green gardener, who will also send you ladybirds in the post!

Set beer traps for a few nights. Pour it in margarine tubs and sink into the ground, discard dead slugs on compost heap the next day.

It wiped mine out in a week .

Thanks. I guess I could use beer at night and remove it during the day - I hadn't thought that through properly [dim enoticon].

Will also look into nematodes. I like the sound of biological warfare!

Copper wire, eggshells and coffee grounds. I use barbed wire as well for a quadruple defence system but barbed wire is not really child-friendly.
I also put out some scary looking playmobil vikings for good measure.

Gravel round the base of plants?
Encourage birds. Encourage hedgehogs. Discourage cats and dogs.
Copper wire?
Beer traps in yoghurt pots in ground? This last is said to be v effective.
Monty goes out at night with a torch and squishes them.
I have birds round and about who eat the slugs with great glee.
But I do have to inspect the bottoms of pots to make sure the slugs aren't hiding there (which they often are) and when found, I flick them off with the trowel and the robin eats them.
Plants such as hostas are generally planted in a pot and placed well above ground so the slugs cant climb up to them.