The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Growing => Vegetables => Topic started by: suziequeue on June 10, 2012, 07:15:46 am
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Any good ideas gratefully received. In the past we have been relatively unscathed so I guess I have tuned out of threads on slugs but I'm all ears now ;D ;D ....... but now we are moving the veg plot out into our middle field and our experimental courgettes have been decimated by slugs.
So last night we put grit all around the base of the one remaining courgette plant (which seems to have survived the night) and blue pellets at the edge. This morning I went out and picked up over fifty slugs - mainly the small brown ones. There was slime everywhere. They were clearly attracted to the pellets :thumbsup:
What else to do????
Any good ideas?
Can I feed the slugs to the chickens?
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Suzie,
I can't really help but just to say I have never seen so many slugs as we have had in the past couple of days. They obviously like this very wet weather. My chickens free range but they DON'T seem to be eating them :(
Sally
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Yes - I'm also a bit concerned about the active ingredient in the blue pellets. Probably not designed for chicken cuisine!!!
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slugs everywhere
combination of raised beds and (more helpfully) sheeps wool wrapped around the plants keeps the slugs right off. I just did it as I figured they wouldnt like the texture but apparently they dont like the smell either :-)) There are even commercial products now made of the extract apparently!
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We've had some success with beer traps in the past. Tesco Value Bitter was the most effective.
Best of all was Nemaslug - kept our veg beds slug free for years at our old place.
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I use Growing Success Adavanced Slug Killer which is acceptable in an Organic system as it is Ferric Phosphate which breaks down to Iron and Phosphate, both natural ingredients in soil. I have found it very effective in the past but now my mouse and vole population have decided that blue pellets are the must-have contributor to the Feng Shui of rodent homes - they collect the whole lot up overnight and line their nests with them ::) ;D
I get very annoyed with the giant black solid slugs but of course it's the little grey and fawn ones which do so much damage. My OH is very fond of the Great Greys so I leave them be and I think they eat other slugs anyway (or so OH claims).
Encouraging frogs, toads and hedgehogs into your garden helps. Hens don't eat slugs, but apparently ducks do - I laughed myself silly at Hugh F-W's trial of ducks in the veg garden, when they trampled all over and tucked into his more delicate crops such as lettuce. Maybe the slugs were on the leaves so they HAD to eat the whole plant :-J
I'm not into activities such as going out at night with a torch and picking off the slugs - where would you stop? There must be many tons of them here :P
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Can't afford to buy anything to ward off the dreded invasion of the slug .
So it is just a matter of pick and squish !
The blue pellets do the job but they also do the job on anything else that eats them too . They also kill anything that eats the dead bodies , and i think that keeps going , ie , slug eats pellet , dies . Bird eats slug body , dies . Cat eats dead bird , dies . Buzzard eats dead cat , dies .
There are blue pellets that are safe for mammals , but they are not the normal ones .
After pick and squish , wool does the job , as does salt , but only so much salt can be put down .
A dusting of lime also works , till it rains ! Soot , weathered for at least a year , also works .
Sand and grit work also , as long as it is dry !
I don't drink , so don't use beer traps , but it does work .
I tried egg shells but found slugs just ignored them .
Nemaslug works , but so would the ashes of £20 notes spread around the plants , ;-) .
I have thought about sinking old roof guttering all round the edge of the plot , and then sprinkle a fine layer of salt in it . It would need a little roof ( ironic !) , to keep rain off though . Then it would just be a war with those slugs within the boundary , reinforcements being held at bay by the salt trap !
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Russ the blue pellets I mentioned are the ones which are safe for other animals and wildlife. I certainly would never use Metaldehyde which does act as you say against other living things.
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Just like a little moat Russ, except salt instead of water. I like the idea :)
Sally
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Yep , thats the stuff fw , well done . Garlic is meant to work to ?
A salt moat is exactly it B. A solid barrier could be sunk in the ground right next to the gutter , to stop them slipping underneath . I just need to get 180' of guttering !
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the organic ferrous phosphate ones as fw says are excellent. dont use metaldehyde!!
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Ducks, definately ducks - just net-off the beds when you put your veg in or they will have a go at it ::) Let the ducks back on them between the plantings - I've hardly gor any slugs at the moment & They've even left my lupins alone this year :fc:
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Just got back from the land . It was dry when i left here to go to the land , but the monsoon hit and is just easing up now . I got soaked to the skin , again !
Anyway , i have a few old copper hot water tanks that i had thought about cutting open and cutting into 6" wide strips . Then sinking the strips next to the guttering around the plot . Double whammy !
Have to get my nephew to ask on freecycle for some guttering .
Have held back so far as i have a thing about plastic , but needs must and all that . I do use a blue plastic barrel for water and buckets and tarps etc , soooooo.
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Sticking my head above the parapet here - I do use slug pellets, but not heavily. Usually only when stuff is planted out and things the slugs particularly like such as courgettes. I did try to garden without them, but to be honest, the lossed were totally unacceptable. At the end of the day, all the hard work I put in to my garden is for the benefit of my family and not for the slugs.
I have never found any evidence of birds, frogs and toads (we have loads of both) eating the pellets or dining on the dead slugs and snails.
I don't free range my poultry or ducks in the garden as they do as much damage as the slugs and snails.
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Have you tried the organically acceptable ones VSS? They work very well (when the mice don't take them away ::) but I think that's just here), survive a drenching, and don't pollute your food crops with toxic chemicals. They are pretty much indistinguishable from the metaldehyde ones in use. You can get them in most garden centres or from the Organic Gardening Catalogue
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A colleague of mine used to go out at night, wearing a headlamp so he could see what he was doing, and pick the slugs off his plants and veg and cut them up with scissors.
I'll second frogs and toads - we have a resident toad in our poly-tunnel and don't seem to get many in there.
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A cheap, chemical free deterrent is bran. Put a thick circle around vunerable plants and the slugs won't cross it.
My hens love to eat slugs, particularly Ros, the Rhode Rock. If the slug is too big to swallow in one go, she stabs it swiftly in half. She usually manages to eat both halves before the other hens realise what is happening. :chook:
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The water-pistol method: I have a water pistol (a spray-cleaning bottle) which I have filled with salty water. Every morning and evening, when doing my stroll around the garden, I spray any of the creatures I see. I also mist plants that are being attacked, even though there are no slugs visible. Brassicas are well able to tolerate some salt - I think they are descended from a coastal plant - and it has never done any harm to any other varieties that I can see.
The good news is that after a couple of seasons of this treatment, I have no trouble at all with slugs and snails.
In the long-term I may have to deal with a salt build-up but the slug-free years will have been worth it.
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get a few buckets of road salt and grit from the bins on the verges and spread this round your borders, you used to be able to get a water on slugit that stopped them breeding .
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But too much salt will kill off all vegetation.
The Romans, when they eventually defeated Carthage, dismantled the city stone by stone and spread salt on the site. They were probably planning on starting a lettuce patch.
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I'm sorry to say that the biggest killer of hedgehogs isn't cars but slug pellets :( Also, never use slug pellets if you have cats, they can become addicted to them, with fatal results.
Scrounge some large plastic drinks bottles and cut rounds out of them, put them in place and plant your courgette or whatever in the middle. The slugs won't cross the jagged edge. Beer traps and sheeps wool also work. Ducks, though are the best of all, I think. :&>
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Good idea sylvia.
I used to make beer traps out of old pop bottles but unfortunately other insects fall into them - especially brown beetles which are beneficial.
However, just having the jagged edge round the base is a great idea and a good way to use the arse end of the 2 litre pop bottles that I use the bodies of to bury in the polytunnel to deep water the tomatoes.
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The best thing we ever did was dig a small pond. We had a total slug festival site here when we moved in. I created a small pond the first year we were here and loads of frogs appeared. We still have some slugs but nothing on the scale we had. Frogs are great.
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Yes - we had a largish pond dug last summer and there was loads of spawn in the spring.
The last of the tadpoles have just left and the grass is hopping with little 3/4 inch froglets.
Once we get some longish grass around the allotments they should be able to travel further afield and hopefully get through the holes in the rabbit-proof fencing to go to work on the veg patches.
:D :fc: