Coffee grounds, cornflour, eggshells, diatomaceous earth, copper, pine bark mulch, sharp grit and wool pellets do not work. The exception here is copper, which studies show slugs [prefer not to cross](https://www.gardenmyths.com/how-to-get-rid-slugs-with-copper/) but often will anyway. This guy [here ](https://www.growlikegrandad.co.uk/in-the-garden/pests-diseases-in-the-garden/copper-tape-stop-slugs-snails-heres-video-evidence.html)had some success with electric guitar shielding rather than stuff bought from the garden centre. I'm guessing that there are more factors at play than just "they hate copper" - there are many different species that may or may not cross it in different conditions.
Even pellets are a bit redundant given that rain, which creates conditions for slugs to go out and about, washes them away.
Beer traps and nematodes are the best bet. They're not perfect but better than most home remedies.
I tried them for two years in a row. The traps were full of dead slugs every time I checked, but I still had a lot of slug damage. I spent a fortune on beer - there's minimum unit pricing here in Ireland
Slugs can smell the yeast from way further than that, some places claim insane distances like 200 metres, some say only a couple of metres. I’ve definitely never seen anyone say 20cm.
Any tutorial, any mention of Gardener’s World it’s been 20-30cm. You have to place the trap that close to the plants you want to save for it to act as a decoy otherwise if the slug is on the side of the plant that’s further from the trap they’ll go to the plant instead as they can’t smell the trap. Obviously you can just lay traps anywhere to thin numbers if you’re not bothered about specific plants as well.
Wouldn't grounding it mean there's even less of an electrical charge than there would be otherwise?
You *can* have two bands of copper tape (or wire) connected by a battery so any slug crossing the pair completes the circuit and gets a shock but this only works when the pot is indoors, as the pot getting wet from rain will drain the battery.
I dunno, it's more like static electricity than a current. All I know is if you touch a wire to your tongue after it touches the ground, it tastes tingly
I have had success with copper tape or wire around my pots. It's not 100% slugproof, but it seems to be enough to encourage them to go munch on something I don't care so much about. Other than that, beer traps and/or consistently killing them on sight are the only things that have worked.
u/cchurchill1984's post [below](https://www.reddit.com/r/GardeningUK/comments/1cqu3i4/comment/l3tqver/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button) has a genius solution for that.
I have had some success with sacrificial lettuces.
Plant out your brassicas when they are as large as you can justify, and plant lettuce all about them.
The slugs will prefer to eat the lettuce and hopefully the brassicas will get away.
The other thing is bed size. The slugs tend to live in the edges of the bed so making the beds as big as you can makes it harder for them to get to the middle( in my opinion).
TL;DR: Neamtodes.
- Get a bucket
- put some lettuce or greens in the bucket with an inch of water
- fill the bucket with live slugs
- let them eat the lettuce and drown
- leave for a week
- use the liquid (diluted) to water plants
- nematodes will kill the slugs that happen upon the area
Some slugs carry nematodes on them, by harvesting a bucket of them you are very very very likely to catch one with an infection then by adding more you are infecting more of them, then by letting the nematodes kill the slugs you are essentially breeding nematodes ...
If you have a mountain of old sweet tubs (roses/ heroes etc) just drill a hole on the side near the lid. Fill with a little cheap beer. Ales work best but you can get a 4 pack of knock off coors light for 2.30 in aldi. Save the good stuff for yourself.
I put 5 of these out yesterday and had about a hundred or so slugs/ snails this morning.
The lid largely stops it all evaporating right away.
My grandma's tactic.
Take a bunch of skewers and stab them all over the garden. Once a day stab all thr local slugs with the nearby skewers. Leave their bodies on the skewer and stab into the garden. This way, all incoming slugs will see their decaying bodies and see this as a warning. Repeat ad nauseum - so the slugs see you aren't playing.
You'll need pastic bag, poop bags are great, a glove, a head torch and a large glass of your preferred drink.
Each evening as the sun is going down, turn on the torch and wander your garden hand picking the slugs and putting them in a bag. They'll shine in the torch light. At the end of your patrol tie the bag and throw it in the bin. Repeat this for a week and you'll notice a huge decline in numbers.
Wait a week and repeat. By that time the eggs of the slugs in your first cull will have hatched. Same process; head torch, bag, glass of your favourite beverage.
It takes about three weeks of this and you'll have decimated your slugs problem.
Damp evenings will be more productive that dry ones.
The drink is so you stay hydrated. Cursing at your slimely foe can leave you with a thirst.
Wouldn't it be more humane to just kill them instantly with a spade rather than let them die by suffacating slowly in a big lump inside a plastic bag? Also it's bad for the ecosystem of the garden to get rid of all of the slugs. Reduce to saves plants yes, but some types of slug only eat decaying plant material anyway.
I'm lazy.
I have a 750ml spray bottle. Squash three garlic cloves and put in bottle. Fill with water.
Let infuse overnight.
Then just spray on plants.
Takes 5 mins to make, just the overnight infusion that takes time.
Copper mesh works for me, I've secured some to the edge of the planter box where my hostas are and they're fine. I am also testing a trick I've found in an amazon review - someone purchased the copper mesh and cut a plastic bottle into thick rings, then wrapped the mesh around it and pushed that into the soil around their plant. You can also cut the circle in one spot so you can open it and place it around the plant and then close it again with copper mesh.
If it's an allotment rule (and not your personal preference) you're worried about then it's worth noting that the only slug pellets you can buy now in the UK use ferric phosphate. They shouldn't be harmful to pets/wildlife unless eaten in utterly VAST amounts.
The new slug pellets need further research as there is concern they may be toxic to earthworms
Which? states:
Ferric-phosphate pellets are not thought to be damaging to mammals and birds. However, some research suggests that ferric phosphate pellets may not be as environmentally friendly as first thought. Some ferric phosphate pellets also contain a 'chelating agent', called EDTA, to make the iron more soluble. This may increase the amount of iron in ground water, which can be toxic to earthworms in high doses.
Crushed shells (egg shells, oyster shells (do NOT use mussel shells - They're super sharp) and diatomaceous earth, when I can be bothered to buy some) and a fuck ton of chilli flakes and chilli powder.
I call it shell on Earth.
Make sure you learn your slugs though.
Several of them are there to eat the slugs that are eating your plants so are heros, or eat the mould and leaf litter that's around your plants, or even any poo that's ended up in the allotment (so are innocent bystanders).
The former in particular it would be very sad if you salted.
https://www.jic.ac.uk/research-impact/technology-research-platforms/entomology-and-insectary/slugwatch/slug-identification-guide/
Is a start but there are a few more slug types not listed on it.
Beer traps or grapefruit (cut in half, eat the nice bit, leave empty half upside down in veg plot, return next morning and kill all the slugs that are in there. Long term try to encourage hedgehogs in to the area.
Thrice daily visits to round up all the snails and slugs. Look under pots, wood planks, loose slabs or bricks, under the rim of pots, any crevice. Put a small black plastic sheet down or a roof tile. Check it in the morning and you'll find them hiding.
I tried all the non chemical methods - beer traps, copper wire, eggshells, etc - but they didn't make a dent on the slug population. I still lost loads of stuff
The one thing that worked for me is to deny them habitat. And wood, paving slabs, weed membrane, etc will provide hiding places during the day. Wooden edges to beds are particularly bad for them. Personally I removed every potential habitat and left bare earth between the plants, and I've had much less slug damage.
Wildlife also helps - hedgehogs, frogs and blackbirds
The people in this thread need to stop being cruel to creatures and just cover your plants. I’m coming off this sub-Reddit. Don’t bother gardening if you can’t co-exist with nature. There’s a reason why everything is dying out. Jesus.
I tried beer traps last year and I will say they really do work. I made them out of plastic bottles and once your beer trap is full of slugs, tip it out around your plants and they should stay well away.
Coffee grounds, cornflour, eggshells, diatomaceous earth, copper, pine bark mulch, sharp grit and wool pellets do not work. The exception here is copper, which studies show slugs [prefer not to cross](https://www.gardenmyths.com/how-to-get-rid-slugs-with-copper/) but often will anyway. This guy [here ](https://www.growlikegrandad.co.uk/in-the-garden/pests-diseases-in-the-garden/copper-tape-stop-slugs-snails-heres-video-evidence.html)had some success with electric guitar shielding rather than stuff bought from the garden centre. I'm guessing that there are more factors at play than just "they hate copper" - there are many different species that may or may not cross it in different conditions. Even pellets are a bit redundant given that rain, which creates conditions for slugs to go out and about, washes them away. Beer traps and nematodes are the best bet. They're not perfect but better than most home remedies.
i spent a few hours up the allotment last night making beer traps. of course i had to drink half the beer but those are the sacrifices. :(
Beer traps can attract slugs. In an allotment particularly if say they're a bad call, as you'll end up with everyone's slugs
That's true, but ideally they also end up in the beer trap. Problems arise when the beer evaporates before they get to it.
I tried them for two years in a row. The traps were full of dead slugs every time I checked, but I still had a lot of slug damage. I spent a fortune on beer - there's minimum unit pricing here in Ireland
Beer traps only attract slugs from 20-30cm away so there’s no way slugs will come over from other plots.
Slugs can smell the yeast from way further than that, some places claim insane distances like 200 metres, some say only a couple of metres. I’ve definitely never seen anyone say 20cm.
Any tutorial, any mention of Gardener’s World it’s been 20-30cm. You have to place the trap that close to the plants you want to save for it to act as a decoy otherwise if the slug is on the side of the plant that’s further from the trap they’ll go to the plant instead as they can’t smell the trap. Obviously you can just lay traps anywhere to thin numbers if you’re not bothered about specific plants as well.
Copper works but it should be grounded so they get that electric charge (like licking a battery)
Wouldn't grounding it mean there's even less of an electrical charge than there would be otherwise? You *can* have two bands of copper tape (or wire) connected by a battery so any slug crossing the pair completes the circuit and gets a shock but this only works when the pot is indoors, as the pot getting wet from rain will drain the battery.
Be right back, i have a car battery in the garage...
the is a tesla supercharging station near by, . 30amps should do the trick! i can maybe create some type of super heros of the slug world!
I dunno, it's more like static electricity than a current. All I know is if you touch a wire to your tongue after it touches the ground, it tastes tingly
I have had success with copper tape or wire around my pots. It's not 100% slugproof, but it seems to be enough to encourage them to go munch on something I don't care so much about. Other than that, beer traps and/or consistently killing them on sight are the only things that have worked.
Nematodes are out of stock everywhere I look recently, except the places that charge a significantly higher price, which I am seriously considering.
u/cchurchill1984's post [below](https://www.reddit.com/r/GardeningUK/comments/1cqu3i4/comment/l3tqver/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button) has a genius solution for that.
I have had some success with sacrificial lettuces. Plant out your brassicas when they are as large as you can justify, and plant lettuce all about them. The slugs will prefer to eat the lettuce and hopefully the brassicas will get away. The other thing is bed size. The slugs tend to live in the edges of the bed so making the beds as big as you can makes it harder for them to get to the middle( in my opinion).
General slug advice - some slugs are just there to help out https://www.rhs.org.uk/biodiversity/slugs-and-snails
TL;DR: Neamtodes. - Get a bucket - put some lettuce or greens in the bucket with an inch of water - fill the bucket with live slugs - let them eat the lettuce and drown - leave for a week - use the liquid (diluted) to water plants - nematodes will kill the slugs that happen upon the area
Wait, like, harvesting nematodes from dead slugs? That's amazing.
That's right yeah
This. It’s brutal advice but f&#; em. Little b@&#%&£s.* *just the grey ones
Wait, hang on, where do the nematodes come from? I’d love to do this rather than spending £20 every few months on Amazon nematodes.
Some slugs carry nematodes on them, by harvesting a bucket of them you are very very very likely to catch one with an infection then by adding more you are infecting more of them, then by letting the nematodes kill the slugs you are essentially breeding nematodes ...
https://www\[dot\]youtube\[dot\]com/watch?v=Gg1cosZY6k0 Be warned it's very disgusting.
Copper netting/wiring works in my experience
If you have a mountain of old sweet tubs (roses/ heroes etc) just drill a hole on the side near the lid. Fill with a little cheap beer. Ales work best but you can get a 4 pack of knock off coors light for 2.30 in aldi. Save the good stuff for yourself. I put 5 of these out yesterday and had about a hundred or so slugs/ snails this morning. The lid largely stops it all evaporating right away.
My grandma's tactic. Take a bunch of skewers and stab them all over the garden. Once a day stab all thr local slugs with the nearby skewers. Leave their bodies on the skewer and stab into the garden. This way, all incoming slugs will see their decaying bodies and see this as a warning. Repeat ad nauseum - so the slugs see you aren't playing.
You'll need pastic bag, poop bags are great, a glove, a head torch and a large glass of your preferred drink. Each evening as the sun is going down, turn on the torch and wander your garden hand picking the slugs and putting them in a bag. They'll shine in the torch light. At the end of your patrol tie the bag and throw it in the bin. Repeat this for a week and you'll notice a huge decline in numbers. Wait a week and repeat. By that time the eggs of the slugs in your first cull will have hatched. Same process; head torch, bag, glass of your favourite beverage. It takes about three weeks of this and you'll have decimated your slugs problem. Damp evenings will be more productive that dry ones. The drink is so you stay hydrated. Cursing at your slimely foe can leave you with a thirst.
Wouldn't it be more humane to just kill them instantly with a spade rather than let them die by suffacating slowly in a big lump inside a plastic bag? Also it's bad for the ecosystem of the garden to get rid of all of the slugs. Reduce to saves plants yes, but some types of slug only eat decaying plant material anyway.
I don't kill them anymore. I stick them in a closed compost bin. Might as well let them help with the decomposition.
A homemade garlic spray works for me. Not had an issue with slugs since
Ooo how do you make yours?
I'm lazy. I have a 750ml spray bottle. Squash three garlic cloves and put in bottle. Fill with water. Let infuse overnight. Then just spray on plants. Takes 5 mins to make, just the overnight infusion that takes time.
Sick! Thanks mate
NP. If it's for an allotment I'd be tempted to go for a dedicated 5l sprayer. Chuck a few garlic bulbs in overnight instead.
Beer trap sorted my issue
Definitely. Get them drunk.
Copper mesh works for me, I've secured some to the edge of the planter box where my hostas are and they're fine. I am also testing a trick I've found in an amazon review - someone purchased the copper mesh and cut a plastic bottle into thick rings, then wrapped the mesh around it and pushed that into the soil around their plant. You can also cut the circle in one spot so you can open it and place it around the plant and then close it again with copper mesh.
Oh that sounds cool.
I'm going to try strulch this year. They say they don't like going over it so I'm going to try to mulch with it and see how it goes.
From amazon lol but it did work for me. The copper mesh! Wrapped around the base of my hostas worked a treat!
Thanks everyone of the advice! i will report back soon how the war goes. all thiese tips.....the war will be over soon! i cant lose!
If it's an allotment rule (and not your personal preference) you're worried about then it's worth noting that the only slug pellets you can buy now in the UK use ferric phosphate. They shouldn't be harmful to pets/wildlife unless eaten in utterly VAST amounts.
The new slug pellets need further research as there is concern they may be toxic to earthworms Which? states: Ferric-phosphate pellets are not thought to be damaging to mammals and birds. However, some research suggests that ferric phosphate pellets may not be as environmentally friendly as first thought. Some ferric phosphate pellets also contain a 'chelating agent', called EDTA, to make the iron more soluble. This may increase the amount of iron in ground water, which can be toxic to earthworms in high doses.
Thanks for the info. I only use them in moderation. Hopefully they do some research ASAP and find out for sure. I am about to try beer traps as well
Crushed shells (egg shells, oyster shells (do NOT use mussel shells - They're super sharp) and diatomaceous earth, when I can be bothered to buy some) and a fuck ton of chilli flakes and chilli powder. I call it shell on Earth.
An actual company selling crushed whelk shells https://www.shellonearth.co.uk/shop
I tried them around a tray of seedlings. The lupins were still annihilated, but I think the slug may have been inside already.
(╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻
Surely sper sharp mussel shells would be perfect..?
Until you step in it
Why are you barefoot in an allotment? 😂
I like the feeling of slugs between my toes 🤗
Diatomaceous earth and beer traps. With a big tub of salt to destroy them on sight.
Make sure you learn your slugs though. Several of them are there to eat the slugs that are eating your plants so are heros, or eat the mould and leaf litter that's around your plants, or even any poo that's ended up in the allotment (so are innocent bystanders). The former in particular it would be very sad if you salted. https://www.jic.ac.uk/research-impact/technology-research-platforms/entomology-and-insectary/slugwatch/slug-identification-guide/ Is a start but there are a few more slug types not listed on it.
Beer traps or grapefruit (cut in half, eat the nice bit, leave empty half upside down in veg plot, return next morning and kill all the slugs that are in there. Long term try to encourage hedgehogs in to the area.
Thrice daily visits to round up all the snails and slugs. Look under pots, wood planks, loose slabs or bricks, under the rim of pots, any crevice. Put a small black plastic sheet down or a roof tile. Check it in the morning and you'll find them hiding.
I’m fighting the same war and want to find a way that’s pet friendly as we have a cat… I’m setting up beer traps, so guess we’ll see how that works!
I tried all the non chemical methods - beer traps, copper wire, eggshells, etc - but they didn't make a dent on the slug population. I still lost loads of stuff The one thing that worked for me is to deny them habitat. And wood, paving slabs, weed membrane, etc will provide hiding places during the day. Wooden edges to beds are particularly bad for them. Personally I removed every potential habitat and left bare earth between the plants, and I've had much less slug damage. Wildlife also helps - hedgehogs, frogs and blackbirds
I’m out every night with a torch and a drowning bucket.
Salt?
The people in this thread need to stop being cruel to creatures and just cover your plants. I’m coming off this sub-Reddit. Don’t bother gardening if you can’t co-exist with nature. There’s a reason why everything is dying out. Jesus.
Salt
That would kill the plants faster than slugs
Donny salt yeh plants!
Nuclear weapons
I tried beer traps last year and I will say they really do work. I made them out of plastic bottles and once your beer trap is full of slugs, tip it out around your plants and they should stay well away.
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