War on slug! Massive raised planter. Help please.

[Wiifitmama]

First sunny day so we finally went out to start sorting the garden for the summer. We have a massive raised planter in our garden. We have cleared it of all weeds ready for replanting with veggies are per normal. But on clearing it, we have realised it is infested with slugs. Loads and loads of slugs! I have never seen it like this in the 7 years we have been here and I assume it is because of the endless rain.

So, after totally clearing the weeds, I have sprinkled (poured!) loads and loads of those little blue slug pellets all over the surface. My plan was to leave it for a couple of weeks, topping up the pellets as needed, to try to get rid of them before we begin planting. Will this work? Is there anything else I can do? I have no pets and the kids are all much older so I am not worried about safety - I just want rid of the slugs!!

I hear that slugs maintain the population. Lots of eggs in the soil which hatch when others die. But I'm sure you can get it under control in a planter.

How about nematoads? They last a few months I think. Expensive though.

You also need a way to stop them getting back in. Copper tape is supposed to be good.

I use copper tape, it saved my salad last summer. I grew that in a huge pot. In your position, I’d replace the soil and start fresh.

Are you saying that even if I kill them off, they have laid eggs in the planter so we are doomed!?!? That is depressing. The planter is two railway sleepers high and about 15 fit wide. There is no way I can replace the soil in it, though I had planned to add some compost on top before planting again this year.

We used to have copper tape staple gunned all the way around the planter in the early years. Most has fallen off now. I could replace it but it sounds like there is no point if the eggs will hatch inside it anyway.

There is truly no way I can replace the soil. I would have to hire in people and heavy machinery!

Nematodes are your friends. They are the microscopic, naturally occurring, harmless to humans, organisms who are the natural enemy of slugs. You can buy them online or in most garden centres. Spread them over the garden and you'll have no more slugs.

I have never heard of nematodes. I will google now, thanks

Are these hedgehog friendly?

You don't spread nematodes over the garden, you mix them into water and water them on. They do get the population down and unlike the little blue pellets won't harm other creatures in the garden.

Upturned cabbage leaves & grapefruit skins will catch a lot of the blighters. You can also buy slug traps that you bait with beer - they get drunk, fall in and drown.

Copper slug tape works really well, and apparently slugs don't much like crawling over crushed eggshells, bran or alpine grit either.

Unless you want to go out and scoop up dead slugs killed by slug pellets before the birds or hedgehogs eat them and get poisoned as well, then nematodes would be better really.

Something else I've done in the past is to go out on a damp night with a torch and collect the buggers with a trowel. We have a handy field a few hundred yards away (the other side of a main road), and we have dumped hundreds there. You do get funny looks though, if people see you creeping about the neighbourhood in the small hours with your torch and your slime-encrusted mollusc-filled bucket

The slug pellets are out there now, and having read about the nematodes it seems like I need them anyway for the larger slugs and also the snails. I will order nematodes tonight and use that next for all the smaller and undersurface slugs. Thanks for the tip about that.

There is no way I am going out collecting slugs - dead or alive! Plus, I live in central London so no handy fields to dump them in. I am not overly keen on the neighbours on one side - but even so, I think dumping my slugs over the fence might be a step too far!

There are organic certified pellets that claim not to kill wildlife (except for slugs and snails) which are effective, and cause the beasts to go underground, therefore not dying visibly.

I have no reliable info about how wildlife friendly they really are, though.

Nematodes are good. Get new ones in after 6 weeks. Ultimately the egg laying will be stopped, but holy shit slug eggs are long lived things.