I trying to used a mix method. My Spanish slugs seemed to have gone for the moment, and in their place are tiny weeny black one's that look like bits of earth. So trying to find and pick them off is pretty hopeless. At least the Spaniards had the decency to be fat.
I'm trying beer traps, assiduous debris removal (fallen leaves, prunings etc) and maybe will take out a few wooden planters to see if that helps. I will stop using wood chip mulch too as I think my problems may have got a lot worse with that. I hope to use some areas of gravel, to slow them up a bit.
I tried penstemon and they are still happily unmunched so I might go more in that direction. Autumn's wall flowers and sweet williams we pretty decimated - about a quarter still left. Foxgloves don't survive in the ground by me. It's a good thing about growing roses - everything else attacks them, but not slugs.
I find that birds seem much happier to eat cut up molluscs than live ones, I would guess because of the absence of slime. In my garden there are no predators of molluscs - no thrushes locally (apart from blackbirds) and no hedghogs in our little terraced gardens. No amount of wishing will make them appear by. Other gardens in other areas will have different bio profiles.
Gardens are not 'natural'. They tend to create a huge population of pests like slugs, far more than resident birds and amphibians can cope with. Also, Spanish slugs are not native and are not eaten by our usual characters.
Yes - but if @Wildlifelover is in an area without those Spanish slugs , it's quite easy to alter planting to mitigate the problem All you can do is attract wildlife with the various means available , and then let everything get on with it. You get a balance of some sort eventually. No garden is perfect anyway - stuff dies, stuff lives, whether it's plants or anything else.
It's a place where beautiful isn't enough of a word....
I live in west central Scotland - not where that photo is...
We have a pond, hedgehogs and plenty of birds yet the slugs are so numerous, Spanish included. At the moment, it's small ones hiding in plants that are doing the damage - I picked loads off a couple of Polemonium yesterday and some of the crocus' had slugs pulled off them last night having had half the flowers eaten.
As I say, I'll go with pellets and cutting them in half and keep fingers crossed.
All you can do is attract wildlife with the various means available ,
and then let everything get on with it. You get a balance of some sort
eventually.
I don't think this sort of approach will ever work in my kind of small garden (3mx7m) for reasons given above. I have changed my planting a fair amount and use high pots for plants like foxgloves and dahlias, I have pretty much given up on the idea that most herbaceous perennials can return, for plants like phlox I grow on in pots high off the ground until at least 50cm tall before risking them in the ground then do nightly slug hunts through the spring. I find myself using more and more shrubs (oddly) as there is a good chance they will still be there in the morning.
Posts
All you can do is attract wildlife with the various means available , and then let everything get on with it. You get a balance of some sort eventually.
No garden is perfect anyway - stuff dies, stuff lives, whether it's plants or anything else.
I live in west central Scotland - not where that photo is...
As I say, I'll go with pellets and cutting them in half and keep fingers crossed.