slugs and snails are decimating all my veg-help!

[ProperLavs]

They are eating my sweetcorn, they have completely eaten all my courgette plants and nearly all my beans. I have tried grazers, but it made no difference. I am reluctant to use pellets as I have a cat and there are lots of birds in the garden. Is there anything that works? last year this wasn't an issue but this year.....

Wool pellets are great but expensive and only work well till the next rain. My mum is a professional gardener and puts new plants inside a ring of plastic from a pop bottle or similar and fills the inside with horticultural grit. This is very sharp, made of quartz I think, and the pests won’t cross it.

Nematodes are also very effective but you need to be sure the soil is moist two weeks before and after applying to ensure success.

straw? they don't like to crawl over it. Been so dry here that straw would stay crispy dry for a week or 2 or longer.

Only snag with chickens is they’ll scratch about in your veg beds and cause as much damage the snails

Wool pellets I have are surviving heavy watering and rain.

I use wool pellets because I ran out of eggshells- I saved stacks but need even more stacks. They worked too.

Instead of going out twitch a torch, leave a bit of black plastic out on the ground at night near where they do the most damage and you can just flip it over and pick loads up in the morning.

They seem to love hiding under it during the day so it makes them much easier to find.

with a torch.

Go out after rain and kill all of them.
You can make your own organic slug deterrent.
Slug beer traps are quite useful.

After weeks of watching slugs wreck everything I planted, I succumbed to the promise of the dreaded blue pellets.

I use the ones which slugs feed on and then retreat to their shady slug hideaways to die underground, away from view of hungry wild birds. I put them only under the foliage in my pots, so the neighbourhood cats and my dog can't access them or ingest them accidentally. We also don't get any hedgehogs in our garden as their is a solid brick wall enclosing it.

So far so good, my latest new hosta is as yet uneaten...

there. OMG the shame*

I gave up on strawberries (DS's really) as he used to get quite upset at coming down to a slug ravaged strawberry

This year is the first I had problems with them on plants..they have decimated quite a few and when I replaced one small petunia with another they have wiped it out overnight. I planted 5 small plug ones on Saturday and two are gone

The bastards

Apparently if you pour a can of BEER into the soul it stops the slugs 🐌 🐌f don't know how true that is Bina neighbour of ours used to be constantly pouring it into the garden so much so that another neighbour once said that when he died he was coming back as a slug in the said garden..

You can leave a bit of beer in the can and use it as a slug trap. They die happy.

I don't want the little shits to die happy!