The fight against the slugs.

[sorbetandcream1]

Help!
My strawberries are being eaten by earwigs...how can I protect them? There are zillions of them.

My other veg is being eaten by slugs and snails. I've covered the ground in slug pellets but they don't kill them straight away. The slugs eat a pellet, have a final meal on my veg then die.

What am I doing wrong?

When I'm at home, I'm out 4/5 times a day removing slugs.

Any other way of keeping them away?

Thank you!

An organic gardener just told me if you kill a slug by pinning it to the ground the others keep away. She seemed such a gentle sort of woman too😧
Someone else reckoned human hair clippings do the trick, think I'll ask the local hairdresser for a bagful!

Ah, I've never grown hostas. I always assumed it would be pointless .

Wee slimy shites have eaten everything in my garden this year. I've put down porridge oats in the past and found they work. Must do again.

Do pigeons not eat the porridge oats though?

I got really excited just now when I thought the hedgehogs had moved in to my veg garden but it was a lost baby so I reunited it with its family.

The hedgehog people confirmed nematodes are fine so I will sell a kidney and stick with those, my baby hedgehog ....

I always find if you kill a slug all his supposed friends attend Come Dine On Me. I had a cat who would be sick in the garden and the slimy fuckers even ate that. Slugs are not fussy what they eat.

I went to a very beautiful garden near me recently. Lots of water - a waterfall, ponds, and a damp sunken location. And hostas everywhere - not one of them with even the tiniest bite taken out.

I emailed them and they swear that it's the frogs and newts in the pond eating the slugs, and nothing more than organic slug pellets the rest of the time. There was neither hide nor hair of pellets anywhere I looked (and I had a good poke about for them too).

I am not sure I believe them!! But whatever they are using, it works.

I have newts, and a snake, but I still have a ton of sodding slugs.

My nemaslug has arrived. I must admit that I was a bit indignant at first because the pack has an expiry date of 18/7 and I was expecting a longer date. Having read the instructions it seems that one application lasts for six weeks which means that I will waste a lot of even the small pack.

My veg is only 10m2 ish this year, I was hoping to get a few applications out of one pack!

Has anyone else got such a short expiry date or is this the norm/rubbish?

Evil blighters. I am going to buy some beer today, DH refuses to part with his, but am intrigued by the coffee grounds tip. I put them on my vegetable patch already. Do I just sprinkle them over my strawberry plant?

Triple defences made up of coffee grounds, copper wire and eggshells.
Works in my garden but the eggshells and coffee grounds need replenishing sometimes.

I think nematodes are alive so can only be kept for a short time. Ideally, they should go on the garden as soon as they arrive.

Nemaslug here too. I get the 40m2 pack (just over a tenner?) which just about does my tiny garden. I've been using it 3 years now and it's loads better than pellets. I tend to only do one application a year - in late May/early June, as after that hopefully the plants are big enough to take a bit of a munching, and the weather's dry enough that there are fewer slugs about.

Earwigs - I can never grow dahlias (which makes me sad) as they get munched. I tried upside down flower pots on sticks filled with shredded paper last year, then every day you shake it out and stamp on any that are there. It did work (there were a few in there every day), but I don't think I was disciplined enough to check and deal with them.

If your precious plants are put in pots then you smear around the tops with vaseline it really works . After being organic for quite while I have noticed that the birds are doing the work too. I wish I had a proper pond though .

This feels like the worst year I've ever had for slugs. My beer traps are getting what they can but plants are still being eaten. I've never bought chemical slug killer before but I was going to get some after work .

I nearly went down the slug pellet route meg, then the hedgehogs moved in. Sadly only 5% of a hedgehog's diet is slugs apparently.

I knew that nematodes were live but when it said six weekly applications I was hoping to get more than one out of a packet, rather than just one.

That is interesting tiger, that you only do one application, I only planted my new lot of seeds this week so maybe if I treat the garden now I will only need one more pack (she hopes) in August.

Its just a matter of growing plants they won't eat or keeping any bushes, grass and plants well cut back , I've been fighting the buggers in my garden continuously for 5 years! Also I read an interesting article that says the more big ones you remove a mass amount of smaller slugs or snails will take their place. This year I've decided to grow set patches of veg they love and allow them to eat it as a sacrifice to save all the plants I want to keep, so far so good I still have carrots which have never survived before !

After years of organic gardening I've finally cracked and sprinkled metaldehyde on my allotment. Everything was being eaten down to the ground and my neighbours in the adjacent plots were muttering and probably planning my demise, so I had to poison the slimy little fuckers.

I've managed to keep on top of things in my garden by going on slug patrol every morning and evening, copper tape on pots and sprinkling iron sulphate pellets, eggshells and used tea leaves around the plants. We back onto a nature reserve so there are plenty of newts, slow worms frogs and toads here. No hedgehogs though, as we live next to a badger set.

Snark - doesn't the poison kill the wildlife?

Yeah Catherine Also I wouldn't eat any of the produce. from the allotment.

I'm using slug pellets at the allotment in the middle of town, not my garden.The plot is a tad overgrown at the mo, and I'm hoping that once I get it completely cleared I can go back to organic. Everyone else at the allotment seems to be a big fan of chemical warfare- the guy opposite me drenches his plot in Roundup as he's too lazy to weed it. I'm amazed anything grows there.

Fe sulphate is completely safe and approved by the Soil Assoc. and other organic bods BTW. It doesn't persist or enter the food chain.

Sainsburys Basics lager works well in beer traps. It's so cheap and vile that you won't feel resentment at having to share your pint with a slug. The bitter works better, but Sainsbos have stopped making it.

You're let off Snark I'm amazed that anyone uses roundup after the publicity it's got. Be careful when he uses it Snark don't breathe it in esp. don't let any children near.

I found out recently that while metaldehyde IS bad for wildlife and water systems, it's not as lethal as I had thought. (There was a thread on here about it and I learned loads doing a bit of amateur sleuthing). The organic pellets seem benign for wildlife.

To be honest, in some places the slugs are at absolute epidemic levels while in others it just seems to be a bit worse than usual. I've never seen anything like as there are around me right now - I can't actually walk from my front door to the road (3 metres) in the dark without squishing at least one. It is gross!