Slug it out to banish pests
SLUGS are the gardener’s worst enemy, chances are they’ll be working their way through your patch right now. And they are eating-machines. Equipped with 27,000 teeth, each and every one of the slimy little blighters scoffs twice its own bodyweight every day. Over the course of the summer a single slug (weighing in at a tenth of an ounce) eats a whopping one and three-quarter pounds of plant material – and each square metre of an average garden houses 200 of the critters.
It’s amazing there’s anything left and in the case of tasty salad and veg or tender young bedding plants, very often there isn’t – unless you take decisive action.
There are shed-loads of “green” remedies. Slug traps range from the traditional saucer of beer (though it’s claimed slugs actually prefer low-alcohol lager), to natty devices that you sink into the soil with a tasty bait in the base so you can lift the lot out – corpses and all – without getting your hands slimy. Or try surrounding your most “at-risk” plants with slug-deterrent barriers. The traditional way was a ring of prickly holly leaves but now there are high-tech versions.
You’ll find granules that are made of natural minerals that work by soaking up the slime that a slug glides along on, literally gluing the beast to the spot, where it’s easily frazzled by the sun or eaten by a predator. You can also buy copper strips that emit a faint electric shock when a slug tries to cross. These are ideal for fixing round the edges of raised beds or containers.
There are special mats made of a material that irritates delicate sluggy skin so they won’t cross – these are ideal for standing tubs and troughs on.
And for the greenhouse there’s a silvery reflective fabric you lay on the ground, which suppresses weeds, reflects light back up into your crops and deters slugs at the same time since they don’t like the “feel” of the stuff.
Another wizard wheeze is to spray plants with something nasty-tasting, such as yucca spray, but you could always brew your own extra-strength garlic “tea”. For plants growing in pots, try coating the rim with WD40 – some swear by this. Others recommend coffee grounds, though not the decaffeinated kind.
One of the cleverest anti-slug measures is biological control.
This technique uses nematodes: microscopic “eelworms” that seek out and infect slugs. This tactic costs more than other methods and must be applied precisely but you may think it’s worthwhile when you have valuable collection of at-risk plants, such as alpines or your rare perennials, or you want to keep your salad patch intact.
There is also now an organically acceptable alternative to those ubiquitous little blue pellets: Growing Success Advanced Slug Killer, which is used in the same way, scattered thinly between plants to be protected, but it also contains ferric phosphate that’s harmless to pets, birds and other wildlife.
No green slug remedy acts as a “magic bullet” so for good results I’d suggest using several different methods simultaneously all round the garden, repeated regularly.
SCENT TO SIGNAL THE ONSET OF SUMMER