Slugs and snails

[JamesA]

I've set up a vegetable patch in my new house this year.
2 tomato plants have been completely eaten down to a 2cm stalk and the bean leaves nearest the fence are littered with holes.

I've got some containers out to trap the slugs and I've surrounded the patch with sharp bits of tiles and some sand in places.

What are people's favourite anti-slug methods?
I know you can put pellets down, but doesn't that attract the slugs from the whole garden down to where you put the pellets?

Also should I be killing every snail in my garden to protect my vegies?

 

[JohnD]

When you use pellets you have to put enough that when a slug emerges from the ground it will blunder into one.

They don't attract slugs by scent or sight!

If you use pellets (or the water-on chemical whose name I forget) then for the first week or so you will see a lot of dead ones, then the population will drop and you just need to scatter thinly, and along the fence or borders where they come in from your neighbours.

You can treat the whole garden or just around the veg plot and use your sharp materials to reduce the numbers that wander in.

A lot of giant ones live in the lawn.

If you have an old stone wall, lots will live in the fissures.

 

[pitbull]

A slug is a snail who has been evicted!

 

[JonB]

My wife keeps a bucket of very salted water, every night with a torch she walks round the garden and puts them in the bucket .

JonB

 

[JohnD]

What did the slug say to the snail?


"Big Issue, guv?"

 

[2scoops0406]

surround your plants with crushed shells, slugs and snails hate it. Bit rough on their tums, poor loves.

 

[JamesA]

Thanks for the tips.

I think I've worked out part of the problem; the fence near where I've got the vegetable patch had ivy on it and there were lots of snails behind the ivy to get out of the sun.
I've torn down most of the ivy now...

 

[Aiken]

Post em to me, my ducks love em.........

 

[JamesA]

I had been hoping to keep it 100% organic and environmentally friendly, but I ended up buying some slug pellets in the end.
The dead slug/snail count is well over 50 now...

The pellets turned the snails yellow.
Is it OK to leave the dead ones out? The birds wont be poisened if they eat them will they?

 

[Srodders]

I had been hoping to keep it 100% organic and environmentally friendly, but I ended up buying some slug pellets in the end.
The dead slug/snail count is well over 50 now...

The pellets turned the snails yellow.
Is it OK to leave the dead ones out? The birds wont be poisened if they eat them will they?

I once counted over 200 in one night at the last house I lived at - the garden had been quite neglected. And yes the birds will be poisoned if they eat them - clear them up each morning, the earlier the better.