Night Scented Stocks and Slugs?

[Wildwood6]

I’d love to grow some night scented stocks but I’m not sure whether slugs have a taste for them or not? I try to keep slug delicacies to a minimum and grow things they have a taste for in pots but I’m struggling to get a definitive answer. How have they faired in your gardens?

They are most of mine last year. Some survived and bloomed, but it was a bad hit rate.

Ate! Ate, not ‘are’

I planted 15 garden ready stocks and 15 forget me not plants last autumn. I have 15 left of one and just saw the last one of the other (can't remember which is which) slowly disappear last week.

I can only assume the slugs got them as I also have some nibbles to my hyacinths.

Bastards!

I don’t think of them particularly as slug bait. But I do start them, like everything else, in a slug free area in pots.

You could consider Matthiola incana. Same scent, but bigger plant and perennial, so once you have it past the young and vulnerable stage you can stop worrying

Thank you so much for all the replies, that's a really good shout on Matthiola incana @MereDintofPandiculation , I didn't even know there was a perennial version! I'll give them a try!

A little tip - whatever you grow, put down slug pellets (if you use them) at least a week BEFORE you plant the plants to reduce the population. We've used nematodes for several years which are very effective against slugs but pellets are still needed for snails.

Please don’t put down slug pellets! Hedgehogs and birds eat the poisoned slugs and ingest poison themselves

IME they are vulnerable to slugs when just emerging, but once they are established it's okay.

I have found that wool pellets are good protection against slugs but it doesn't look very pretty. This year I am trying some Shell on Earth.

Yes!

Please do not use poison.

Don't worry! I'm super protective of my small family of frogs! (Just two last year but they seemed to make some difference to the literal armies of slugs I had previously). I'm trying to coax more in as another way of dealing with the constant slug attacks so I'm utterly paranoid about putting anything in the garden that might harm them!

Thank you!

Dried seaweed around the plants will help deter slugs plus fertilise the plants. Love night-scented stock.