How to keep hostas beyond the reach of slugs
sir – Chris and Bill Neil (Letters, March 8) are struggling to keep their hostas safe from slugs and snails.
I put my hostas in pots, then in round steel trays (with drain holes), and hang them from a low tree or shrub. Slugs appear to suffer from vertigo.
Nick Trevor
London SW4
sir – I have been cutting my husband’s hair for years and put the clippings in the hostas. I have never had a slug on them. I do keep them in pots, though. Sally Cornwell
Ascot, Berkshire
sir – One solution, I read, was to boil up plenty of garlic, then spray the hostas with the garlicky water.
Perhaps I didn’t use enough garlic, or didn’t boil it long enough, but it had no noticeable effect.
Alex Prescott
Penrith, Cumbria
sir – When the jar of homemade jam I had been given started to ferment, I tipped the contents into a large empty ice-cream container and put it on the lawn so that it could be enjoyed by bees.
It rained overnight and in the morning I discovered that rather a lot of slugs had succumbed. They were not just drunk from the fermenting contents, but dead drunk.
I left it in place and it attracted more and more slugs. I emptied it on the compost heap and asked my friend for more jam. I did not explain why.
Dr Rhoda Pippen
Cardiff
sir – At last year’s Chelsea Flower Show I noticed a few tell-tale blue pellets beneath the leaves of some prize hostas on the display of one of the professional growers. He told me that there is no practical deterrent apart from the dreaded metaldehyde, and without its sparing and surreptitious use most professional nurserymen would go out of business.
The only exception that I am aware of is the late Queen Mother’s wonderful walled garden at the Castle of Mey, which I visited last June. The huge mounds of hostas did not show even the smallest sign of slug damage. Apparently slugs like the salt-laden air blowing in from the Pentland Firth much less than they like metaldehyde, and the gardens are virtually molluscfree. Unfortunately this piece of information is unlikely to be of much use to the Neils in Shropshire.
Wynne Weston-davies
Calne, Wiltshire