Best say to deter slugs (safe for kids)

[Mummabear04]

What's the best way to deter slugs? I have young kids so needs to be safe for them. I mainly don't want them to get to my strawberry and tomato plants! (Planted in pots)

Strulch

We use rosemary and sage branches. Cut and strewn round the plants you want to protect they work really well. We've got a lot of stone walls in our garden so have loads of slugs but very little gets eaten using this method.

I’ve used garlic wash with great success and wool /wool pellets.

www.siennahosta.co.uk/pages/garlic-wash-recipe?srsltid=AfmBOopeyzUS3RWjErE-JnXg8T1w36bPC3lNTxHr9Xt1nfvcyi82XLCw

Nematodes. You can buy them from Amazon, not cheap but work really well on slugs (not snails).

I've had good success with copper tape on tubs, I do a double strip of thick tape to be sure they can't cross it.

Beer traps.
Really effective and non-toxic.

Beer traps. I don't buy the purpose made ones. I just used big jars or yoghurt pots slightly slanted in strategic places. I catch quite a few.

I'm going to try the sage and rosemary thing on my potted hostas. Thanks for the tip.

Frogs and hedgehogs!! 🦔 you can buy food for hogs to encourage them into your garden. We got a cheap motion activated camera and could watch them come in at night

Send the children out at dusk with a bucket of salty water to collect them. Or, if the children are old enough, a pair of scissors.

My friend, who's a gardener, said there aren't so many about this year because it was a colder winter. Fingers crossed.

Nematodes.

Yes, Nematodes.

@ScribblingPixie - you can live in hope. But where I live it’s often frozen and under snow all winter and we still get millions of slugs in summer!

Thanks for the rosemary and sage tips. Do you literally just add cut stems around the edges of planted areas?
Maybe I could plant more sage also

Ducks.

...you can live in hope. But where I live it’s often frozen and under snow all winter and we still get millions of slugs in summer!

Ugh, in that case it's back to the garlic and water spray for me. That really does work but only if you're consistent with it. If you let it wear off you can lose the plant overnight.

Does planting fragrant herbs or veg help?
I planted chives last year near peppers and they helped a bit I think. Could have been coincidence though

That's what we did, completely encircled the plants. I was sceptical, but we had no slug damage at all last year.