50 Shades Lighter
Having covered the positively mediaeval methods available for murdering slugs, I thought it was only fair to give some time to the methods available to the pacifist. My instincts tell me that some level of extermination is necessary to begin with, or slugs become an ever-multiplying problem, but there are those who disagree and I remember that in one of his books Monty Don argues that slug populations naturally self-limit based on slime density on the ground, and then suddenly explode when slugs are wiped out.
Either way you can never eliminate slugs from a garden, and once you have killed enough of the blighters to regain your cool and feel some degree of inner peace, there are ways to limit their damage and keep them away from certain areas.
Part of what makes slugs and snails such a particular problem for gardeners is that they specifically target stressed and vulnerable plants. Once mature, your romping courgettes and dahlias will be safe from them even if they get the odd nibble, but one damp evening can be enough for a newly transplanted courgette to be devoured completely, or for dahlia shoots to disappear without trace. Plants are most vulnerable when they are very young, damaged or weak, and so the following are ways to either protect plants through their infancy, or toughen them up quickly to fend for themselves.
Unhealthy
To deal with unhealthy foliage first, tidying up the plants in a garden can be one of the best ways to reduce a slug’s feeding ground. This works best in a vegetable bed, and stripping the lower, elderly leaves off things like brassicas helps to keep the plants fresh and healthy, as well as lifting the lowest accessible leaves off the soil surface. In flower beds this can be a bit harder to achieve, but cutting back plants that are yellowed and dying, and removing any particularly damaged lower leaves should help to keep the ground clear.
Weak
Next on the list are plants that are ‘weak’. By this I mean plants that have been grown in conditions that make them overly lush and pampered. With home reared plants, the best thing to do is to make sure you don’t feed them too much nitrogen, so that any plants fending for themselves in a border have been grown at a steady pace and are tough. The other ‘weak’ plants are those exotic beasts produced by garden centres which have spent much of their lives pampered in a green house. For these, it’s important to make sure you harden them off a bit before planting them out, so give them a few days in a sheltered spot outside before you plonk them in the cold soil and expect them to cope.
Seedlings and young plants
This final category can be the most heart breaking and is the hardest to control. This year I have already had so many tragic losses including all my cucumbers save one, a whole row of carrots and a lot of annual seedlings. These plants need to be protected from slugs, and since they can destroy an entire crop of tender seedlings in one evening, never put off protecting them until the next morning.
For toxic barrier methods see 50 Shades of Grey, but the following will all put a slug off without killing it. It’s worth noting that apparently all barriers should be pretty wide (ideally 1.5 inches min) in order to make sure slugs don’t just take a deep breath and charge over them.
Egg shells – Google knows I’m a keen gardener and constantly bombards me with adverts for ’10 things to do with egg shells in the garden’. Certainly slugs hate to cross crushed eggshells but to create any meaningful barrier you would need to be a body builder knocking back omelettes like Gaston. Crushed sea shells work the same way are perhaps a good option if you live near the coast.
Wool pellets – I have recently stated trying out wool pellets as a barrier. They are organic and eventually break down into the soil as a mulch. They smell awful for the first few days and need topping up regularly in wet weather, and once again the barrier has to be quite wide for slugs to be deterred.
Copper – Supposedly a slug’s slime interacts with the metal to create a current which slugs find distinctly uncomfortable. Copper tape can be placed around pots, and this year I am experimenting with nailing copper mesh to the edge of our raised beds as it is a bit wider and more practical over a large area.
With long rows of seedlings I have resigned myself to leaving the ends of rows as a sacrifice, and I try to have a reserve of seedlings in plugs that I can pop in as reinforcements when first sowings are taken, or else keep transplanting unfortunate seedlings from the safety of the middle of the row outwards as I thin them.
Morning watering and reducing habitat – Finally, one of the best ways to reduce slug damage in something like a vegetable plot is to make sure there is as little habitat for them as possible and leave your soil clean and exposed. Slugs only like to come out in damp conditions and are active at night, so watering in the early mornings means that the soil is dry by the evening and an uncomfortable surface for them to cross. (Just beware that watering in the day time heat can impact plant health in increase wilting and water dependence so this is one for the early risers.)
When I look at the chewed end of a cucumber stem or a row of slime that was once spinach I try to remind myself of the valuable role slugs play on the food chain of so much wildlife, but to be honest I’m not very generous spirited about it. I take each loss very hard, descending to brutal extermination in tit-for-tat warfare, but then a spell of dry weather arrives and the casualties on both sides from a few days of rain are left far behind.
Whether slugs bring out your inner sadist, or you’re able to take a deep breath and move on, I wish you all the best in your battles. If karma turns out to exist, I will be reborn as a slug in my next life, and I can only hope that whoever runs the garden has a bigger heart than mine.
