Grow Your Own Magazine

Hi there, i am a newbie and i have been very busy growing on the windowsill....

now i have my greenhouse and i have planted my toms in a grow bag on the floor, i have heated my greenhouse, but my question is about slugs!!!

will they come into my greenhouse and can i get rid of them! they havent been in yet which is good, i will be putting beer traps down when i plant out, but i wanted to keep my seedlings going, the toms are really growing well and i dont want to lose them all!!

thanks very much for your advice.

Su

yes they can,and do get in,beer traps work fine,but if you go out after dark with a torch,and look,they can usually be found active,and its suprising how high the little ***** can climb,well they did last year,up my cucumbers,and the snails,they hide in the folds of plants,as well as the underside of the leaves,also keep a watch underneath pots ext,some even live in the soil.
Is also a good idea to search the area around the outside,good luck

Ive found the best thing to keep slugs away is copper tape, you can stick it round your growbags and pots and you can get the collers to. Slugs absolutely hate copper and as long as you give the copper a wipe every now and again I guaranty not one slug will slime its way over.

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Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons for you are crunchy and good with ketchup!

only trouble is that copper tape is tres cher.

I will be using beer traps, eggshells, bran, manual torch search, 12 bore shotgun and grenades this year.

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Mr D
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www.storesprite.com

we had a terrible time with slugs last year. Couldn't grow lettuce for love or money. even if i started them inside and transplanted them (in loo roll tubes) when they were quite big they still got wiped out. And that was with me slug hunting every night with the torch!

so this year i am prepared: nematodes are on order, i plan to put bran down and sawdust/woodshavings from the local petshop (as a trial run, thought they might work as the bran does), beer traps.

In addition i'm going to trial a spray made from chilli tea - again, this is an experiment from a book on herbs i read, mash up 20 or so chillis in a blender, dump into water and leave to stew for a bit. drain and put the resulting water into a spray bottle and squirt liberally around your plants onto the soil. I would be careful if you have pets/children that wander amongst your plants, and don't, for heaven's sake, spray into the wind!! its actually recommended for rabbits, but i think it might well work on slugs (might even stir a little salt into it too). As i said, though, its an experiment and i will only be trying it on one corner of the garden, so i don't recommend this or anything like that. Be interested to know what other people think of it.

keth
xx

thank you everyone, a friend of mine suggested salt (she said to watch them sizzle!!! which i thought extreme ha ha (NOT),

i think i will try with the egg shells and get some copper tape, saw that in homebase the other day, but may try some salt, just as a precaution, i not seen any yet! so fingers crossed they think my plants smell and they stay away .

cheers

Intrigued by the chilli tea idea (presuming that was recommended for getting rid of rabbits and not just making my lettuce tasty and spicy :P). My new allotment has some resident bunnies which I have yet to be able to presuade to move on and it would be good if most of what I grow feeds me rather than them how often would this need reapplying? and would it affect the taste of the finished crop?

Hi

Nothing works as good as salt. I use it in my small paved yard, its just that the rain washes it away.
So you will do just fine.

T

Becca: the original didn't say anything about how often it would need applying. I don't think you spray it onto the crop, rather, onto the areas where they're coming out, if you can find them, the entrances to their burrows, or perhaps spray the earth/grass around your crop. As i said, its not one i have personal experience of, so take it with a pinch of salt.. give it a go, perhaps a sacrificial pot of something you *know* bunnies will like, placed near their burrow, and the stuff sprayed all around will prove it? I don't have bunnies so its not something i can test for. Do let us know if it works though!

thanks -

keth
xx

i cut up old copper water tanks into 2 inch strips then make a circle around the plant i use this as a barrier . there is a bit of work in cutting the tanks up i use a good snips but the strips are a life time job never needing to be replaced

Hi. Not quite the same, but we had a terrible time with slugs last year (first spring/summer in our new house). They would crawl up the conservatory doors and fry on the floor tiles, yuk! We used nematodes and they were absolutely brilliant, nary a slug left in the entire garden. Not quite the same as stopping them decimating the greenhouse (we don't have one, polytunnel instead which is open to all comers!), but for the garden just brilliant.

I've a couple of sluggy questions...
1. This copper tape plan sounds good - but dont slugs come up through the ground?
2. Are nematodes natural? Will they harm me or my pets? AND will they harm birds that eat the nematoded slugs and snails?
Cheers
Sal

As I understand it nematodes are natural. They work underground and the slugs will die underground so there is no danger to other animals/birds.

sorry to sound thick - whats a nematode?????

My original reply about copper tape was a response to squashysu's question about keeping the slugs out of the growbags. I grow all my veg in pots and growbags so for me the main way the slugs get to my precious veg is by sliming up the sides of the pots or growbags. So I stick the tape half way up.
Your right sally for you ground growers copper tape isnt going to do much. However, a copper collar around the base of a plant will stop the little beasts climbing up your plants from the soil. The real key with the copper is to make sure you give it a wipe every now again as copper covered with muck is no use.

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Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons for you are crunchy and good with ketchup!

its a very small creature.. there are many different kinds, some are parasitic and some even attack humans! Some are beneficial to us, in that they attack things we don't like - like slugs. They're like bacteria in that there are many many different kinds. the specific kind that attack slugs can be bought as "nemaslug" or similar. See this page for info on nematodes.

HTH

keth
xx

I'm planning on using nematodes this year- they're naturally occurring wee beasties that burrow into, and kill, all slugs above & below ground. They're harmless to other wildlife, including everything that might eat the slugs,

Unfortunately, they're harmless to snails too1

They only kill slugs for 6 weeks or so from when you apply them, but I reckon that once you've decimated the slug population in your garden they'll have a hard time recovering enough to cause much damage for the rest of the year.