Slug and snail help!

[PurpleWisteria1]

Pretty much every plant I have put in my garden over the last few years has been totally munched by snails. On some plant every leaf of gone as soon as they come.
we have a cat so need something that won’t harm her.
Is there anything that’s actually effective to get rid of slugs and snails but pet friendly? please say there is!

Defo try to grow plants bigger before planting out. Apparently soot around the plants helps too.

I'm hoping to try strulch too, although understand it's expensive & wondered about making it myself?!

Realised last night that the slugs are munching my hollyhock and echinacea before they're barely out of the ground. I put a cloche over the hollyhock and lifted the echinacea to pot up until it's a bit bigger.

I had a massive slug issue

Went out every night for a week with a head torch and picked them all up in a bucket. Covered overnight and next morning relocated them to my local park the next road over in my slug bucket.

Started off picking up about 40, last day or so was only a couple so have definitely dented the population significantly

My husband thinks I am insane when I call out that I am taking the slugs to the park but but I don't like killing things if I can avoid it.

You could keep a few chickens - they will eat them. Bread dough is also effective in traps - mix a cup of flour, a cup of water and a teaspoon of active dry yeast together, let it get bubbly for a few hours inside, and put it in slug traps.

I’ve anything up to 170 frogs in my garden. It doesn’t make a noticeable difference

And I'm also not a fan of nematodes. The thought of them makes me feel a bit queasy A nematode zoologist friend of mine told me that if everything in the world was evaporated leaving only the nematodes, the world would look the same , with the shape of everything outlined in nematodes

I've had this problem in the years I've lived at my current house, a few weeks ago I googled 'plants slugs don't like' and went to the garden centre armed with the list! I bought dahlias, fuchsias, dianthus, paeonia, geraniums and rhododendrons and so not even a nibble 🥳

Here's some tips I haven't tried yet but intend to - old pennies around the plants (after the 80's they had less copper in them) as I found an ancient jar-full, vaseline around the rim of pots and putting old teabags or coffee filters in the base of pots (drains water out but stops slugs getting in through the bottom).

I also use garlic spray or EcoWidow slug and snail repellent (quite expensive but reasonably effective and smells nice).

Good luck!

Dahlias?! Slugs luuuuurve dahlias, I'm cosseting loads in my conservatory until they're big enough to plant out and survive the onslaught.

I have a very sluggy and snaily garden. I use nematodes in spring which really do help, though you have to keep the garden watered. Next week will be perfect for doing nematodes as it's going to be rainy so the weather will do it for you.

Next best thing is going out every night around 10pm and picking them off. I relocate to the green waste bin, where I figure they get a feast before they die.

This year has been particularly bad due to the warm, wet winter. All my daffodils came up, flowered for one day and then got eaten overnight 🤦

I pick them daily. Every day!! I've been out this morning and collected another 50 or so slugs.
Snails I've pretty much controlled, I set nice hiding places for them, upturned plant pots etc. Then I collect, I also hunt them in the places they naturally like, plant pot rims, under ground cover plants.
I also find if you squish a few snails and leave them on a rock etc, the snails and slugs will feast on the remains, which again makes collection easy.

I have an army of frogs and newts plus tonnes of visiting birds, they don't do a very good job.

I agree about planting things they don't like, I planted hundreds of snapdragons out last week, not one has been touched, same for love in a mist. My lupins, dhalias, cosmos etc, won't go out until they are much bigger plants.

Eggshells, garlic spray, coffee grounds and copper rings have all failed for me. Sometimes I think slugs will inherit the earth after we're long gone, along with the cockroaches.

Beer traps - do you think non-alcoholic beer would work? Asking because we've got some in the fridge already, which no one is likely to drink.

Torch at night, bag and bin them.

The only thing that I have found to work is not buying plants that they like to eat. I've even found snails inside a hanging basket that I'd hung about 8 feet up a tree. they'd climbed all the way up the tree and down the chains holding the basket.

Sorry, but they like dahlias. Agree the rest are fine

It turns out it isn't a dahlia, It's a hydrangea 🤦🏼‍♀️😂

As well as not putting things out till they’re large, grow them “hard”, not too much water and fertiliser. Slugs like soft tender growth

For Clematis, don’t prune them short, leave a woody stem of 2m. Slugs and snails can climb up there, but they won’t do so in such numbers

I am using coffee.grounds but found a big snail in the middle of one of my pots today so that's a fail!

Slightly different 😂

I don't think this works.

Never worked for us, and my friend who has a pet African land snail feeds shells to her snail as a source of calcium.

@zaxxon I put non alcoholic beer down in our traps last year and the buggers weren't interested.

Left half a can of lager on the table by accident though and they all crawled in.

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but in my garden they'll feast on the new growth of hydrangeas as well- I planted them precisely because I was told the slugs wouldn't eat them! Not all of the hydrangeas weirdly, but a poor hydrangea 'Limelight' that I planted last year got decimated overnight. I've got a couple of other varieties, including Oakleaf and Candybelle, and they seem to have survived the onslaught weirdly. Do you like roses? I find they're truly slug proof.

Nematodes and strulch

Just when I thought i had not only lost the battle but our garden was in fact a hopeless case last year we had a Hedgehog move in! Still eating my bloody dahlias though...

Thanks! I know how they feel