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.
I'd say my garden is approximately 8m by 6m, give or take, so I don't have nearly enough room for the diversity of yours.
Last year I went for a full makeover (as yet incomplete) and replaced my in decline maple with a hawthorn, put in some raised beds planting Victoria and czar plum trees, and a greengage. Had to laugh at a blackbird last winter, he was in the hawthorn picking off the haws and throwing them all on the ground The blossom on the fruit trees went down well with insects, especially hoverflies and I'm really looking forward to the blossom on the hawthorn which is just about to start blooming.
If I had a larger garden I'd love to have a small woodland area but for now I shall just have to stick with the fruit trees and hawthorn (which is hardly the worst thing in the world).
@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.
I've been thinking about it and thinking about and have decided that I shall try to put in a mini pond. The spot I'm thinking of is east facing so will be sunny but won't get the full force of the afternoon sun. I like the ones made with Belfast sinks but I really need to finish the rest of the garden before I get started on another project!
I'm always intrigued by the hedgehog diet discussion as it is widely written that slugs are a part of their diet - seemingly more so in September and October although I'm not sure why. Perhaps other tasty morsels go awol at that time of year. The reason I raise this as we have hogs visiting almost all year round and I often take video footage or stills of them at one of the 3 feeding stations. The one we have in heavy undergrowth which is open to the elements (not an enclosed feeding station) attracts the fox (and often hog within minutes of one another) as well as small rodents and of course a small army of slugs but these appear to be completely unscathed after a visit by Mr Fox or Mr Hog. Maybe it's just a case of the hog food being more attractive and in the case of necessity they would revert to what's available naturally including slugs?
I don't know what our hedgehog eats, it snuffles around the ground hunting for things but I don't know what it finds. I have considered putting out food but a lot of the recommendations are things that the local cats would most likely polish off. I'm pretty sure it lives under the shed so it probably finds some morsels under there. You make a good point, it might well be because it prefers the food you leave out.
I think Spanish slugs do the most harm and they are not generally eaten by anything.
Yeah, I get them. It'd be handy if the blackbird who was whacking the crap out of an enormous worm yesterday would be equally as ruthless with a Spanish slug. Unlikely, but if it eats the eggs and the youngun's, in theory it could still keep the population down. At least that's what I'm hoping.
I'm always intrigued by the hedgehog diet discussion as it is widely written that slugs are a part of their diet - seemingly more so in September and October although I'm not sure why. Perhaps other tasty morsels go awol at that time of year. The reason I raise this as we have hogs visiting almost all year round and I often take video footage or stills of them at one of the 3 feeding stations. The one we have in heavy undergrowth which is open to the elements (not an enclosed feeding station) attracts the fox (and often hog within minutes of one another) as well as small rodents and of course a small army of slugs but these appear to be completely unscathed after a visit by Mr Fox or Mr Hog. Maybe it's just a case of the hog food being more attractive and in the case of necessity they would revert to what's available naturally including slugs?
I don't know what our hedgehog eats, it snuffles around the ground hunting for things but I don't know what it finds. I have considered putting out food but a lot of the recommendations are things that the local cats would most likely polish off. I'm pretty sure it lives under the shed so it probably finds some morsels under there. You make a good point, it might well be because it prefers the food you leave out.
You can always make a cheap feeding station which allows the hogs access to the food but not cats and foxes. We have one but we have two others that are open and they do get a variety of interested parties to the dinner table.
We seem to have an awful lot of blackbirds dining in our garden this year. They seem to be going for grubs/worms/small slugs. However, the early growths of lettuce, carrots and broccoli all looked good and healthy until an overnight devastation occurred. I'm afraid I bit the bullet and put down some biodegradable pellets, which seemed to have worked well so far.
Any slugs or snails I find go in the garden waste bin. Hopefully, they enjoy feeding on the contents enough to stay in there until it gets collected!
Posts
Last year I went for a full makeover (as yet incomplete) and replaced my in decline maple with a hawthorn, put in some raised beds planting Victoria and czar plum trees, and a greengage. Had to laugh at a blackbird last winter, he was in the hawthorn picking off the haws and throwing them all on the ground
If I had a larger garden I'd love to have a small woodland area but for now I shall just have to stick with the fruit trees and hawthorn (which is hardly the worst thing in the world).
I've been thinking about it and thinking about and have decided that I shall try to put in a mini pond. The spot I'm thinking of is east facing so will be sunny but won't get the full force of the afternoon sun. I like the ones made with Belfast sinks but I really need to finish the rest of the garden before I get started on another project!
Any slugs or snails I find go in the garden waste bin. Hopefully, they enjoy feeding on the contents enough to stay in there until it gets collected!