I bought some Humane Cat Dog Animal Spike Repellent Deterrents from my local garden centre recently. They seem to work but only for small spaces, probably between plants. An unexpected bonus is that I have discovered that they also trap snails between the spikes. I need to collect them promptly, ie in the morning, as they seem to get away eventually.
I don’t have lots, and i find it hard to kill them, but if I find any I put them on the bird table, after reading the birds will make short work of them. After observation though, i think my birds are addicted to fat balls and can’t be bothered with slugs. I think I’m just redistributing them round the garden.
I know the suppliers of nematodes say they don't do snails , I understand why.🌻 But after several years of using them on slugs my huge snail population has vanished.🌾 I used to plant out large delphiniums several foot high in clumps and loose the lot over night whole 6 by 4 beds of veg and find nothing on the morning.🌱 I used to go out and pick up an army of snails 🙈🐌 marching across my drive hundreds in a night in a long narrow town garden .
🐞
Now I nematode twice a year and chill in the evenings.🍃 Even if you have a huge space hit the most sensitive parts with nematodes it will make a difference.🏡
I am such a big fan I do my garden for slugs and my veg patch with the fruit and veg nematodes for carrot and cabbage root fly.🌿 It helps my gardener's🐝 insomnia.😔
I'm surprised so many people are saying nematodes really work for them reliably. I will have to give them another try. Some years they didn't seem to do a thing.
I'm surprised so many people are saying nematodes really work for them reliably. I will have to give them another try. Some years they didn't seem to do a thing.
You do have to follow the instructions with the watering and the temperature and sometimes you'll get a pack sent that is too close to the 'use by' date to be usable. But I have found them to be very effective. I have a very large garden and I don't nematode all of it, only the veg beds. I have a small fenced area from which I try to exclude rabbits, rats and slugs with fences, firmly shut gates and nematodes. I raise baby plants inside the perimeter fence, use nematodes, and mesh cages and net tunnels, metal tables, shelves suspended on thin wires, scarecrows, the whole kit and caboodle. Once plants pass outside this perimeter they have to fend for themselves. We have a lot of birds, including at least one thrush who eats lots of snails (I find little piles of snail shells around one big rock in the garden), toads, frogs and slow worms aplenty. Hardly ever see a hedgehog but generally there seems to be a reasonable balance.
Voles are the biggest problem - fences don't keep them out and they eat all sorts. They've completely vandalised my bean crop a couple of times. I have a barn owl box up and I live in hope ....
Gardening on the edge of Exmoor, in Devon
“It's still magic even if you know how it's done.”
Have been trialling another crazy experiment this year. After reading about using a homemade garlic spray to deter slugs/snails from chomping tender seedlings I wondered if a mulch would work.
Boiled up a couple of crushed bulbs of garlic in two pints of water, tipped it into a bucket of cold water and used the mixture to rehydrate a couple of coir bricks.
Spread the pungent stinky coir around OH's newly planted pea plants last weekend, so far so good 👍😁. I can see silvery trails on the soil nearby but none on the coir and the plants are intact.
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I have a very large garden and I don't nematode all of it, only the veg beds. I have a small fenced area from which I try to exclude rabbits, rats and slugs with fences, firmly shut gates and nematodes. I raise baby plants inside the perimeter fence, use nematodes, and mesh cages and net tunnels, metal tables, shelves suspended on thin wires, scarecrows, the whole kit and caboodle.
Once plants pass outside this perimeter they have to fend for themselves. We have a lot of birds, including at least one thrush who eats lots of snails (I find little piles of snail shells around one big rock in the garden), toads, frogs and slow worms aplenty. Hardly ever see a hedgehog
Voles are the biggest problem - fences don't keep them out and they eat all sorts. They've completely vandalised my bean crop a couple of times. I have a barn owl box up and I live in hope ....
“It's still magic even if you know how it's done.”
Boiled up a couple of crushed bulbs of garlic in two pints of water, tipped it into a bucket of cold water and used the mixture to rehydrate a couple of coir bricks.
Spread the pungent stinky coir around OH's newly planted pea plants last weekend, so far so good 👍😁.
I can see silvery trails on the soil nearby but none on the coir and the plants are intact.