Best overall control is a balanced eco-system. We have a huge variety of slugs in the garden, but not a lot of any particular species. I grow veg within feet of a wildlife garden with plenty of slugs. I've never gone to the trouble to try to control them, I kind of like them.
I'm not saying I never had a big fat slug eat a row of seedlings, or I wouldn't move one that was about to chomp on something delicate, but never been so much trouble to stop me growing a lot of veg.
The trouble with killing them is that it deprives the predators that would control them, given a chance, so they won't ever hang around to control them. So killing the odd slug we see becomes a lifelong battle that nobody is going to win.
It is not a small undertaking to hand over a significant part of a garden to nature, but it is doable. I call our bit a 'wildlife garden' but it is not like many people's ideas of a garden, or typical of the faddy wildlife gardens that are currently promoted. It is more a tiny wildlife reserve that is purposely untidy, full of nettles, but contains elements I know are essential as an ecologist to attract the right wildlife to control slugs, wildlife which I happen to like a lot as well. Think untidy bit on a allotment and it is 90% of the way there to attract the right creatures in large numbers. Add a pond to something like the untidy bit of an allotment and magic happens.
The result is large populations of creatures that spend a good part of their day, eating slugs.
Any slug that is daft enough to leave the cover of the wildlife area and venture out onto the veg plot, well it is practically doomed, there are plenty of creatures just waiting for such an easy meal.
I'd say the first twenty are harder then it becomes second nature. Snipping them saved all my hostas and salad leaves last year, nature is cruel and sometimes gardening has to be about making despatch choices. I can't feel too bad about affording them a quick death, so many people are happy to boil to death ants or poison them. I'm not about to open a slug sanctuary 😉
Normally I would never contemplate feeding a living thing to another regardless of what it was, but in this instance I can live with with it. Circle of life and all that.
I'm inclined to believe that the 20+ frogs in my pond are helping to keep the slug/snail population down. So if you have the space, a pond may help. We have a fair amount of blackbirds and thrushes as well, again this helps. I assume the frogs mostly tackle the juvenile crawlers - this is on my list of things to research.
I'm inclined to believe that the 20+ frogs in my pond are helping to keep the slug/snail population down. So if you have the space, a pond may help. We have a fair amount of blackbirds and thrushes as well, again this helps. I assume the frogs mostly tackle the juvenile crawlers - this is on my list of things to research.
Frogs will tend to select the small white and grey slug species. Which is ideal as they are often the worst culprits when it comes to having prized plants munched. The huge black ones are avoided, they exude a white mucus when attacked that frogs hate. Luckily the large black species are easily detected and moved on a night time torch walk. Often the very best way to see other wildlife in the garden.
Planning and hard graft is a good start @februarysgirl but gardening is more about patience and understanding the long-term behaviour of your climate and soil. I'd see this early frustration as a great place to start, the raised bed may not look like your mind's eye would like it to, but it will provide you with a solid base on which to built on in the coming years. If you need some instant gratification throw in some annuals and stand back 😉
Prior to the makeover, I had a shade bed filled with ferns and heucheras/heucherellas with a few other shade loving plants. Back when I first bought the house, there was an enormous ash tree down the bottom of the garden and anything other than shade loving wasn't going to work. Looking back at the photos of the small 1l plant pots they came in, it's incredible to see just how massively they grew and in summer how pretty it all was. Never could have imagined it would turn out so well! They're all out of the ground and in pots now, I planted a hawthorn down there last year and wanted to limit the amount of competition for water. I was concerned about the ferns, especially the ones that had to be divided, but everything's growing as per usual, just a little slower
I do have some additional plants on the way now and I'm going to strategically place some of the quirky pieces of wood I have so the gapping is less noticeable. Theoretically
I've planted sacrificial nasturtiums this year and so far so good, they germinate and come up fairly quickly and are easy to get hold of in some supermarkets; seed section.
Best overall control is a balanced eco-system. We have a huge variety of slugs in the garden, but not a lot of any particular species. I grow veg within feet of a wildlife garden with plenty of slugs. I've never gone to the trouble to try to control them, I kind of like them.
I'm not saying I never had a big fat slug eat a row of seedlings, or I wouldn't move one that was about to chomp on something delicate, but never been so much trouble to stop me growing a lot of veg.
The trouble with killing them is that it deprives the predators that would control them, given a chance, so they won't ever hang around to control them. So killing the odd slug we see becomes a lifelong battle that nobody is going to win.
It is not a small undertaking to hand over a significant part of a garden to nature, but it is doable. I call our bit a 'wildlife garden' but it is not like many people's ideas of a garden, or typical of the faddy wildlife gardens that are currently promoted. It is more a tiny wildlife reserve that is purposely untidy, full of nettles, but contains elements I know are essential as an ecologist to attract the right wildlife to control slugs, wildlife which I happen to like a lot as well. Think untidy bit on a allotment and it is 90% of the way there to attract the right creatures in large numbers. Add a pond to something like the untidy bit of an allotment and magic happens.
The result is large populations of creatures that spend a good part of their day, eating slugs.
Any slug that is daft enough to leave the cover of the wildlife area and venture out onto the veg plot, well it is practically doomed, there are plenty of creatures just waiting for such an easy meal.
That is the general idea I'm going for and I'd like to keep as many predators in the garden as possible. I've got a bird feeding station ordered in the hope it'll bring some more feathered ones in.
My garden's not big enough to accomodate an area like that. It's arguable that it's not an inaccurate description of the front garden though I had a wildflower bed and a small lawn but I just left it last year and now it's a bit of a mess. The intention is to replace it all with some wildflower turf, leave it to do its thing and just mow it once a year. I did consider a pond at the back, but there wasn't anywhere I felt one could go. I have had frogs in the garden before although I have no idea where they came from.
I'm inclined to believe that the 20+ frogs in my pond are helping to keep the slug/snail population down. So if you have the space, a pond may help. We have a fair amount of blackbirds and thrushes as well, again this helps. I assume the frogs mostly tackle the juvenile crawlers - this is on my list of things to research.
A pond would be nice, but alas no space. A friend of mine has just made a mini pond, perhaps I'll see how she gets on. I do have blackbirds for certain, I'm not sure of much else (except the starling that's making an awful lot of racket and building a nest between the brickwork, soffit and roof tiles). Up until I did the makeover, I hadn't really spent all that much time in the garden. Now that I have a bench and we've had some nice weather I'm finally able to sit out there and take note of the birds
Best overall control is a balanced eco-system. We have a huge variety of slugs in the garden, but not a lot of any particular species. I grow veg within feet of a wildlife garden with plenty of slugs. I've never gone to the trouble to try to control them, I kind of like them.
I'm not saying I never had a big fat slug eat a row of seedlings, or I wouldn't move one that was about to chomp on something delicate, but never been so much trouble to stop me growing a lot of veg.
The trouble with killing them is that it deprives the predators that would control them, given a chance, so they won't ever hang around to control them. So killing the odd slug we see becomes a lifelong battle that nobody is going to win.
It is not a small undertaking to hand over a significant part of a garden to nature, but it is doable. I call our bit a 'wildlife garden' but it is not like many people's ideas of a garden, or typical of the faddy wildlife gardens that are currently promoted. It is more a tiny wildlife reserve that is purposely untidy, full of nettles, but contains elements I know are essential as an ecologist to attract the right wildlife to control slugs, wildlife which I happen to like a lot as well. Think untidy bit on a allotment and it is 90% of the way there to attract the right creatures in large numbers. Add a pond to something like the untidy bit of an allotment and magic happens.
The result is large populations of creatures that spend a good part of their day, eating slugs.
Any slug that is daft enough to leave the cover of the wildlife area and venture out onto the veg plot, well it is practically doomed, there are plenty of creatures just waiting for such an easy meal.
That is the general idea I'm going for and I'd like to keep as many predators in the garden as possible. I've got a bird feeding station ordered in the hope it'll bring some more feathered ones in.
My garden's not big enough to accomodate an area like that. It's arguable that it's not an inaccurate description of the front garden though I had a wildflower bed and a small lawn but I just left it last year and now it's a bit of a mess. The intention is to replace it all with some wildflower turf, leave it to do its thing and just mow it once a year. I did consider a pond at the back, but there wasn't anywhere I felt one could go. I have had frogs in the garden before although I have no idea where they came from.
Our garden is not huge, though that is subjective, because we judge large as bigger than ours and small as smaller than ours!
Back garden is 70 ft by 40 ft. One third of that is veg plot, one third is the bit the neighbours refer to as 'the patch of weeds'.
Elements the wildlife garden contains:
Native hedge, 40 ft of hawthorn managed on a two year cut system for wildlife
Clay wildlife pond
Compost heaps
Brash piles, piles of sticks from pruning around the garden, scale is a factor here, a pile of sticks a foot high is not going to do anything much, mine start at around 5 foot high and settle to 4 foot and get topped up each year.
A bit specialist, but there is also a reptile hibernation bund, hardcore base covered in soil, more brash on top, nettles allowed to cover it.
The bund has corrugated metal sheets laid on it, loved by slow worms, lizards and grass snakes.
There is also a crack willow which is managed as coppice, it provides a lot of material each year for topping up the brash piles.
Significant slug killers we have:
Hedgehogs
Slow worms
Frogs
Toads
Newts (Smooth and Great Crested)
Birds
Slugs that eat other slugs
Birds I don't feed artificially, we have plenty visit and nest, better they are hungry! I do though provide berries from the hawthorn and leave things like the seed heads of Purple Loosestrife for the birds in the winter.
Over the years I decided it was about balance rather than scale. If you could fit in any of those elements within a smaller garden, it all helps and the rewards are less pests and more wildlife to enjoy.
I've often thought if I was to start again, I might not have gone for separate areas, but instead incorporated all the different elements mixed up. Which goes straight into the realms of ornamental kitchen gardens where striking a balance with nature was the key to not using chemicals to grow veg.
@februarysgirl I assume if you have some damp shady sheltered spots you could attract frogs and toads as well, and my impression is that even a tiny tiny bucket-sized water reservoir (level with soil or slightly above) will help.
Posts
I'm not saying I never had a big fat slug eat a row of seedlings, or I wouldn't move one that was about to chomp on something delicate, but never been so much trouble to stop me growing a lot of veg.
The trouble with killing them is that it deprives the predators that would control them, given a chance, so they won't ever hang around to control them. So killing the odd slug we see becomes a lifelong battle that nobody is going to win.
It is not a small undertaking to hand over a significant part of a garden to nature, but it is doable. I call our bit a 'wildlife garden' but it is not like many people's ideas of a garden, or typical of the faddy wildlife gardens that are currently promoted. It is more a tiny wildlife reserve that is purposely untidy, full of nettles, but contains elements I know are essential as an ecologist to attract the right wildlife to control slugs, wildlife which I happen to like a lot as well. Think untidy bit on a allotment and it is 90% of the way there to attract the right creatures in large numbers. Add a pond to something like the untidy bit of an allotment and magic happens.
The result is large populations of creatures that spend a good part of their day, eating slugs.
Any slug that is daft enough to leave the cover of the wildlife area and venture out onto the veg plot, well it is practically doomed, there are plenty of creatures just waiting for such an easy meal.
I do have some additional plants on the way now and I'm going to strategically place some of the quirky pieces of wood I have so the gapping is less noticeable. Theoretically
My garden's not big enough to accomodate an area like that. It's arguable that it's not an inaccurate description of the front garden though
Back garden is 70 ft by 40 ft. One third of that is veg plot, one third is the bit the neighbours refer to as 'the patch of weeds'.
Elements the wildlife garden contains:
Native hedge, 40 ft of hawthorn managed on a two year cut system for wildlife
Clay wildlife pond
Compost heaps
Brash piles, piles of sticks from pruning around the garden, scale is a factor here, a pile of sticks a foot high is not going to do anything much, mine start at around 5 foot high and settle to 4 foot and get topped up each year.
A bit specialist, but there is also a reptile hibernation bund, hardcore base covered in soil, more brash on top, nettles allowed to cover it.
The bund has corrugated metal sheets laid on it, loved by slow worms, lizards and grass snakes.
There is also a crack willow which is managed as coppice, it provides a lot of material each year for topping up the brash piles.
Significant slug killers we have:
Hedgehogs
Slow worms
Frogs
Toads
Newts (Smooth and Great Crested)
Birds
Slugs that eat other slugs
Birds I don't feed artificially, we have plenty visit and nest, better they are hungry! I do though provide berries from the hawthorn and leave things like the seed heads of Purple Loosestrife for the birds in the winter.
Over the years I decided it was about balance rather than scale. If you could fit in any of those elements within a smaller garden, it all helps and the rewards are less pests and more wildlife to enjoy.
I've often thought if I was to start again, I might not have gone for separate areas, but instead incorporated all the different elements mixed up. Which goes straight into the realms of ornamental kitchen gardens where striking a balance with nature was the key to not using chemicals to grow veg.