Leopard slugs are completely harmless they live on decay and do not eat living plants. Metaldehyde is about to be banned so gardeners will need to change their thinking.
I have worked as a Gardener for 24 years. My latest garden is a new build garden on heavy clay.
It is, of course, true that if you have plants you will have pests and it would probably be a bad thing to get rid of all of anything, but a degree of control is sometimes necessary. You may, if you wish, restrict your planting to shrubs and wild flowers and experience very little trouble with slugs. If you are extremely lucky, your garden may have relatively few anyway and you can smile smugly at the rest of us. However, if it is your wish to grow leafy vegetables or flowering plants of almost every variety AND there are many slugs, action is needed. I have tried more methods than I can count, even pellets, and picking is the only one that made a significant difference. It works big slugs, tiny slugs, native or foreign, it works.
Another option is the method described in this link.
Not 100% effective from when I tried it when I had a lot of young delicate plants in the garden, but I think it had some impact on reducing the numbers.
Thanks for all the input into this matter! I have a question regarding the ferric phosphate pellets - some brands say to use a max of x4 times a year, others don’t mention anything about maximum number of applications. As the pellets are ‘organic’, I assume over application can’t affect soil/plants? But then why say only 4 applications?
It's the Spanish slugs I have the biggest problem with. Eating the plants is bad enough but what really infuriated me was them being all over the hedgehog food I put out. The larger hedgehog didn't give a RA and would still eat the food but the juvenile would take one look and walk off. Absolutely fuming. Even lining the feeding station with copper tape didn't stop them. I bought a pair of garden scissors with a view to collecting them and snipping them in half but I just couldn't bring myself to do it. I ended up lobbing them over the gate into the front garden. In order to get back to the hedgehog food they'd need to crawl over a s**t ton of large angular gravel. It definitely cut back on the numbers. I know ultimately I'm going to have to stop being squeamish and get the scissors out though.
There's often confusion with hort labels when they say "organic". Do they mean the product is not "inorganic" (mineral, like gypsum) or are harvested via organic harvesting methods, and approved by the Soil Association? or both? Some products rather cynically exploit the mix up.
In a video I saw recently, a trader described pumice as "organic" which seemed to reasonably defy any such definition.
Put some beer in a saucer or low rimmed bowl. I use one of the drain saucers i put under my potted plants. Set the saucers in your garden or patio where the slugs come the most. They while be attracted to eat and basically drown themselves getting drunk. It has always worked for me.
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We have loads of them here, but fortunately not the Spanish ones.
I live in west central Scotland - not where that photo is...
You may, if you wish, restrict your planting to shrubs and wild flowers and experience very little trouble with slugs.
If you are extremely lucky, your garden may have relatively few anyway and you can smile smugly at the rest of us.
However, if it is your wish to grow leafy vegetables or flowering plants of almost every variety AND there are many slugs, action is needed. I have tried more methods than I can count, even pellets, and picking is the only one that made a significant difference. It works big slugs, tiny slugs, native or foreign, it works.