What's the best thing for warding off slugs and snails on Hostas?

[MaureenMLove]

My hosta, which is in a pot, has just started to poke through the soil. All the leaves are still curled up tightly and it has the potential to look beautiful. HOWEVER, I know as soon as they start to uncurl, the damn slugs will arrive in droves! What can I do now, whilst there's still plenty of room around it, to stop the little blighters coming for an 'all you can eat for free buffet'?

Have no idea whether there is any chance this would really work, but read the other day of someone who rubbed a ring of Deep Heat around the pot... Apparently it did deter the blighters! other than that, just the usual ideas which I will be trying this year - copper rings, nematodes, eggshells, etc

Oh thanks! I will put a ring of steel around it now!

I am trying pistachio nut shells, rough and salty around mine in their pots.
At sissinghurst NT garden they use major grit in flowerbed situation, guess that they know what they are doing.

Oh salty nut shells! That'll sort them out! I'm going to try a two pronged approach then, Deep Heat and salty nut shells!

Coffee Grounds. YOu need to layer them quite thick and wide on the soil around

I had mine in a pot with copper tape round the sides and gravel on the top. They did seem to stay fairly hole free (at least for the first year - must go and clean the copper so it's shiny again...)

Copper wire is supposed to be the best solution if it's in a pot.

Mine are in the ground and I have this problem every year. Nematodes don't really work because although they kill the slugs, the snails move in to fill the gap. I just rely on slug pellets but they never deter every single slug.

Are you organic? If not, put some shallow dishes of beer out, they drink it, get pissed and drown

At least they die happy!! (and if it's organic beer . . .)
My hosta in the front garden has always survived (surrounded by gravel). The hosta in the back is always holier than Mother Theresa (no gravel)

i had hostas in pots and stood the pots in quite wide, shallow plates of water. the bastards drowned before they ever got up the sides of the pot and also i never had to water the hostas....as they like damp conditions they didnt mind having their feet wet....

My dad boiled garlic cloves and watered the hostas with the water & had fabulous plants

according to enid blyton(sp) book. a bowl of milk, they will crawl in drink milk and be too fat to crawl back put!

On seeing my holey hosta my mother advised me to "rub vaseline around the rim of the pot". This tip came from her gardening friends at the WI but just sounds wrong on so many levels .

We've put sand round ours. They're only just coming up, so I shall report back in a couple of weeks as to whether it's done any god or not!