I'm mulling over the idea of leaving some hiding places next year, some bits of wood or slate, so that I'll be able to lift them during the day and remove the slugs. Has anyone tried this?
I've just watched, thanks for the link. I'm not at all good at killing anything so will stick to the sling 'em far method, but looking at that the planks do seem to be worth trying.
I made collars from fine tree protection mesh - I had some left over and you can also find it lying about in the forest here - and it did help. I only use it for young plants, mostly veg, until they get big enough to cope with some damage.
I've got nothing to add to this other than I've very much enjoyed reading this thread. Good work @Fire , your efforts in the field of slug behaviour are laudable!
I was really interested to read your in-depth studies @Fire. You can probably guess that I would not want to kill them, so I am very pleased you have found removing the decaying wood has made a big difference.
I do use chop and drop method, but only in the woodland area of my garden which is further from the house and in more shade. I find snails and slugs munching away in the evenings in these areas and they sometimes partake of the birds' buffet too.
I find decoy buffets of fruit, nuts and decaying matter really help to keep the slugs and snails busy. I concur that they will travel across all manner of rough surfaces, so barrier methods don't work for me. I also only introduce plants into my garden that are either unpalatable to molluscs or are bigger and older. I made a recent mistake with Cytisus battandieri - my beautiful 2 litre potted plant was completely demolished by snails this September.
I am trying what @b3 does - avoiding plants that the molluscs are known to attack, but it is not an altogether satisfactory state of things, when there is a smorgasbord of wonderful plants out there which I do miss ....
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I do find that slugs love peanut butter over all things (like most of the animal world, it seems). I suspect that many animals and plants crave protein which is not that readily available in chunks in many garden settings. Anything like animal poo, cut up slugs or bird food will be jumped on. I did try setting up a peanut butter jar on its side, as a slug trap. I did go out to do night snips but many more than I saw filled their bellies as the jar was clean as a whistle by night three.
You can probably guess that I would not want to kill them
There are so many strategies and levels of "tolerance" - we must only do what we feel comfortable with. I'm not offering answers to other people, just feeding back on my own experiments.
This article suggests that if taken over 20 metres away their homing instinct no long works.
I have read that snails have a three mile+ homing instinct "more research is needed" (as ever.)
I love this experiment. Snails were colour coded and released from different points to see if they would back their home. All the Cornwall posse immediated started to head home from Hertfordshire.
My plan is to put a blob of colour coded nail polish on groups of snails from my garden and take them off spots one mile away in a radius around my garden. We then time their return. I wanted to do this during the lockdown.
On the question of homing instinct, for a couple of weeks during the late summer, I collected the slugs and snails (very few of the latter) I could find and took them over the road (usually I sling them into the field, a good distance away from the beds) and monitored what happened (roughly).
The garden set up is two long beds along the drive, 50m or so, with a mix of plants including salads, squashes and brassicas. Then the house with lawn around it, then the back beds, including one near the bog area (outflow from the sewerage micro station). The bed behind the house was largely veg this year - beans and salads - with annuals. In other words, the back beds are way further away than the front and not vastly more yummy to slugs.
Consistently, the slugs, all species, headed for the nearest green. One did buck the trend briefly by heading across the road, then took itself back to green with the others. Now, I accept that they might then have changed their minds once they'd sheltered a bit and thought about it, but I saw no evidence within 30 minutes of so of dumping them.
Equally, the population of slugs in the front beds - typically quite low - didn't change, even though those yummy kohl rabi and cabbages were on their route to whichever part of the garden they came from. I would have expected it to increase if they were following a homing instinct.
The population in the 'bog bed' didn't change either, and watching the big brown ones arriving each evening they all came from the same directions - the next door field or the bog, mostly the field, which is not in the direction of where I was dumping them. Again, I would have expected to see them coming from a different direction had they be the same ones returning.
What did make a big difference, though, was when I stuffed my back (picking up a slug!) and couldn't bend over for several days. The populations in all beds went up significantly until I resumed the night picking.
My personal conclusions (guesses) from a very unscientific test are a) that you constantly get slugs and snails drawn to certain plants (and often specific plants) and that the idea of their homing instinct possibly in part comes from the fact that some slugs, but not necessarily the same ones, will keep coming in, and b) that the nightly hunt really does help. But yes, individual snails do come 'home' if you don't take them far enough.
The specific plant thing - more than enough to put down to chance, I noticed that specific plants - a particular young brassica, a particular squash - would get attacked night after night, while other leafier plants of the same species next to them would be almost untouched. I have to believe this is slugs following slime trails. Is anyone aware of anything on this and on how to disrupt slime trails as a deterrent? Or is there merit in the idea of leaving one plant as a sacrifice?
I should say at this point that I don't have a huge problem, no where close to Fire's, but they are enough that I have to keep on top of them.
Clearly, each person's garden is different and the variables at play are
different, so what works for one person's situation might not work for
another; methods that prove effective are not necessarily transferable.
It's so tricky, as we always see on the forum, to apply lessons from one person and their garden to another, without proper scientific trials.
the population of slugs in the front beds - typically quite low - didn't change
Part of the conundrum, I think with slugs (and all small life) is that only a small part of the population is ever visible to us; even more so when it comes to slug eggs and breeding patterns. There are many species of slugs. Some live underground. It becomes even trickier to monitor if you are growing root veg, where you might only see the damage, not the slugs.
you constantly get slugs and snails drawn to certain plants
It would be interesting to see the research on this (I imagine there must be a lot in agri circles on this). It's commonly observed that molluscs go for small plants in the spring. Maybe because of high nutrient density, maybe less tough leaves, maybe they are easier and taste better. No doubt plant hormone distribution is heavily involved. Protein levels? I don't know.
Up thread I noted that with one phlox plant that was covered with slugs at night, it was as if, one day a switch was flipped and I was seeing no more slugs.
Certain plants like sunflowers and dahlias, perennial lobelia, lupins etc seem to be up the hierarchy.
I noticed that specific plants would get attacked night after night, while other
leafier plants of the same species next to them would be almost
untouched.
It is interesting, no doubt.
I opened a thread a while ago on finding out if there is any science at all to the idea that pests go more for weak plants. It's commonly trotted out, but I haven't seen any evidence on this. It's a powerful idea, certainly; much like the idea that disease strikes weak people and all people need to do to avoid getting ill is to beef up. I think we can say, with some certainty that - it isn't as straight forward as that.
Rather than them going for the weaker plants, my instinct was that they were going for the same plant for some reason, possibly following trails of others, which then became weaker as a result. It makes little sense to me otherwise to spend your time trying to find a bit a leaf among the stalk, when you could easily munch away on leaf next door. As you say, it isn't straightfoward!
I'm comparatively inexperienced (certainly compared to many on here), and it makes me feel fractionally less of a numpty to hear how experienced gardeners also struggle against the same things. Not that that will make anyone else feel better, I'm sure!
Posts
I made collars from fine tree protection mesh - I had some left over and you can also find it lying about in the forest here - and it did help. I only use it for young plants, mostly veg, until they get big enough to cope with some damage.
I do use chop and drop method, but only in the woodland area of my garden which is further from the house and in more shade. I find snails and slugs munching away in the evenings in these areas and they sometimes partake of the birds' buffet too.
I find decoy buffets of fruit, nuts and decaying matter really help to keep the slugs and snails busy. I concur that they will travel across all manner of rough surfaces, so barrier methods don't work for me. I also only introduce plants into my garden that are either unpalatable to molluscs or are bigger and older. I made a recent mistake with Cytisus battandieri - my beautiful 2 litre potted plant was completely demolished by snails this September.
I am trying what @b3 does - avoiding plants that the molluscs are known to attack, but it is not an altogether satisfactory state of things, when there is a smorgasbord of wonderful plants out there which I do miss ....
The garden set up is two long beds along the drive, 50m or so, with a mix of plants including salads, squashes and brassicas. Then the house with lawn around it, then the back beds, including one near the bog area (outflow from the sewerage micro station). The bed behind the house was largely veg this year - beans and salads - with annuals. In other words, the back beds are way further away than the front and not vastly more yummy to slugs.
Consistently, the slugs, all species, headed for the nearest green. One did buck the trend briefly by heading across the road, then took itself back to green with the others. Now, I accept that they might then have changed their minds once they'd sheltered a bit and thought about it, but I saw no evidence within 30 minutes of so of dumping them.
Equally, the population of slugs in the front beds - typically quite low - didn't change, even though those yummy kohl rabi and cabbages were on their route to whichever part of the garden they came from. I would have expected it to increase if they were following a homing instinct.
The population in the 'bog bed' didn't change either, and watching the big brown ones arriving each evening they all came from the same directions - the next door field or the bog, mostly the field, which is not in the direction of where I was dumping them. Again, I would have expected to see them coming from a different direction had they be the same ones returning.
What did make a big difference, though, was when I stuffed my back (picking up a slug!) and couldn't bend over for several days. The populations in all beds went up significantly until I resumed the night picking.
My personal conclusions (guesses) from a very unscientific test are a) that you constantly get slugs and snails drawn to certain plants (and often specific plants) and that the idea of their homing instinct possibly in part comes from the fact that some slugs, but not necessarily the same ones, will keep coming in, and b) that the nightly hunt really does help. But yes, individual snails do come 'home' if you don't take them far enough.
The specific plant thing - more than enough to put down to chance, I noticed that specific plants - a particular young brassica, a particular squash - would get attacked night after night, while other leafier plants of the same species next to them would be almost untouched. I have to believe this is slugs following slime trails. Is anyone aware of anything on this and on how to disrupt slime trails as a deterrent? Or is there merit in the idea of leaving one plant as a sacrifice?
I should say at this point that I don't have a huge problem, no where close to Fire's, but they are enough that I have to keep on top of them.
I'm comparatively inexperienced (certainly compared to many on here), and it makes me feel fractionally less of a numpty to hear how experienced gardeners also struggle against the same things. Not that that will make anyone else feel better, I'm sure!