Don’t mesh with us! We will not co-opper-ate…
Ello’ it’s the Mrs here, I’ve finally got around to doing another post!
Every single night, just before bed, VM can be found crouching around the veggie beds on a hunting spree for slugs with his weapon of choice - a pair of scissors! From my safe haven indoors, being too squeamish to look, I also hear the occasional crunching of snails under an unforgiving foot. I wouldn’t normally be one for advocating the brutal killing of our squelchy friends, but when it comes to protecting our veggies then I’ll happily turn a blind eye!
Over the year we have tried to tackle the beasts in many different ways and it certainly seems to be our biggest challenge to date…and continues to be so! One very recent effective method for us though has been the use of chicken wire - both by laying it over seedlings in trays and by creating an upright barrier around the maturing plants. We have found it needs to be adjusted quite a lot with the courgettes as they keep on spreading outwards, but so far we’re really happy with the results.
Come and have a go if you think you’re ‘ard enough!
At the start of the season we bought some nematodes, having been impressed with them last year (however we now think that was down to the fact that the raised beds were newly filled and therefore no existing slugs were present). Annoyingly this year, no dramatic improvement has been noticed - especially frustrating when the little blighters cost so much.
My favourite of the defences is our copper tape, mainly because I think it looks good! We have placed it all the way around the beds and It does seem to do an okay job at keeping the slugs and snails out but obviously not if they’re in the soil already.
We’ve experimented with many options - coffee grounds, egg shells, beer traps (why waste it!) and sawdust to name a few, but none seem as fun to VM as using his bare hands!
Tags: chicken wire in the garden, copper slug protection, nematodes, pests and diseases, stop slugs and snails
June 13th, 2008 at 8:53 pm
Ewwww.
June 14th, 2008 at 1:37 am
Copper tape, huh? I’m going out tomorrow to buy _something_ to fight the slugs with over my strawberries. I’ll have to see if I can find some!
June 14th, 2008 at 6:16 pm
[...] 14, 2008 After recently writing about slugs and reading a few other people’s blog entries (Vegmonkey and the Mrs, Greenforks and Fresh as a Daisy) about our ruthless british slug and its attack on our vegetable [...]
June 14th, 2008 at 8:04 pm
I am having a suspiciously quite time with the slugs, hoping it is because of the number of birds pecking around and not because they are preparing an organised attack or anything…
June 15th, 2008 at 6:14 pm
I had normal plastic mesh over purple sprouting broccoli and the buggers used it as scaffolding and got everywhere! Does the fact that the chicken wire is metal put them off like the copper does?
June 15th, 2008 at 6:19 pm
Amy - they’ll attack when you least expect it! Good luck keeping them off!
Big Al - Welcome once again! I think it’s more that if you snip the mesh in a few strategic places, they get caught out by the spikes, which pierce their skin, speying guts everywhere. Nice…
June 16th, 2008 at 9:18 am
I’ve given up trying to be all Eco-friendly about slug protection, as nothing has so far seemed to work. So I went out and bought some…. Slug Pellets (boooo!).
Sorry, but had to be done. I was loosing too many plants. Thing is, I think they actually quite like the stuff, as one plant seems to have had all it’s pellets removed. I’m hoping this is a good thing, and not the fact that I’m actually feeling them something they like?
I’ll be buying copper tape/piping next year to protect my veg bed though, just didn’t get round to it this year!
June 16th, 2008 at 5:24 pm
Hiya, that’s half the problem. Slug pellets work by attracting the slugs to the plants, where they eat the pellets and get all full up. The problems i have with this are…hold on…i feel an anti-slug pellets post coming on…do i ever stop ranting?!
June 16th, 2008 at 9:49 pm
Hello Mrs. Vegmonkey, nice to see you posting again. The image of your other half attacking slugs with scissors is funny and also stomach churning!!! urgggh!!!!
We use slug pellets but they are the organic ones so I feel ok and they are very good. I will say however that we have experienced loads more slugs than normal this year.
June 20th, 2008 at 5:42 pm
Nematodes just arent going to cut it this year, I need mail order hedgehogs to sort this lot out!
June 20th, 2008 at 9:49 pm
I really have a slugproblem. not just that they’re there, but that I need to get rid of them. my allotment is surrounded by abandoned ones so no matter what I do, they keep on coming. now, that copper-band, that seems like a neat idea. I will have to try that one
hedgehogs don’t eat those type of slugs, do they? spanish slugs? nobody eats them, except other spanish slugs.
June 21st, 2008 at 9:57 am
Lisa - Encouraging hedgehogs might not be a bad idea. The longer you leave them, the more there will be, as the buggers are asexual! Nematodes might be your best bet…or a cat? I’ll put you in touch with Al…you can split the postage!