Slugs are just plain wrong!
Friday, June 13th, 2008
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!
