So I'm pinning my hopes on plant covers, wool pellets, and transportation.
I have delicious Hostas, a lot of the damage is started underground.
You don't mention hedgehogs or blackbirds/thrushes. Much overated in my experience. Transportation has been proved not to work. Snails especially have keen homing instincts. Slug pellets and beer just attract more into your garden. King Charles has a staff.
But a nice bit of prose.
We have blackbirds and thrushes. Sadly too many slugs and snails for them to cope with.
I used to snip them until last year, but my heart was never in it, and I don’t kill anything now. I made a mini pond and find it fills with frogs. If I need to relocate slugs I put them in the undergrowth near the pond. I find shouting ‘deliveroo’ helps.
I mentioned on another thread recently that it's a bit of a myth that frogs and hedgehogs eat lots of slugs. They only make up a small part of their diet. Possibly the same with birds, although thrushes certainly like snails. The problem I have here is that the blackbirds continually chase the thrushes away...
It's a place where beautiful isn't enough of a word....
I live in west central Scotland - not where that photo is...
It is 100% not a waste of time. If you get most of the adults now you will have a lot less issues for the entire year. I've already been out with the slug pellets several times I started in February, by May I will not need to do it again, then I just have to run round at least once a week and pick up the large adults, since they are by their shear size immune to the modern slug pellets.
Remember that some of the slugs we have now (Spanish slug) have no natural predators so you are 100% wasting your time waiting for anything to eat them.
When we started to garden here it was horse pasture, the first year there were virtually no spanish slugs, there were plenty of banded snails a single toad and maybe 2 garden snails. (that I saw) the second year after a year of lovely vegetables there were millions of spanish slugs, they ate entire fully grown icebergs overnight, they ate 24 of 30 squash seedlings on their first night out..It was impossible to do anything. We hand picked several 12l buckets of slugs that year. The next years we have hit them hard with commercial slug pellets every spring. The number of toads is up, there's about one every 10m now, leopard slugs are everywhere, we have at least 3 different ground beetles, the banded snails have also bred and spread, garden snail population is up, there's 3 anvil stones around the garden from the thrushes, but the population of spanish slugs is down a lot and it is possible to actually get a crop of lettuce or strawberries.
Pest species will not find equilibrium in a garden because we keep providing food and shelter.
I have given up trying to remove them in the main. If you do a ‘slug patrol’ then each one removed is one less to munch on your plants, but it will hardly make a dent.
I put wool (raw or packaging wool) around new plants, like sweet peas, as I find eggshells and coffee grounds are not that successful.
I have tried so many things over the years and now I grow my veg in pots and small tender plants start on a table/potting bench which does help.
One thing that deterred them last year was the hot, dry spell, but plants are often established by Summertime anyway.
Edit: NO slug pellets allowed in my garden because of the other wildlife.
I mentioned on another thread recently that it's a bit of a myth that frogs and hedgehogs eat lots of slugs. They only make up a small part of their diet. Possibly the same with birds, although thrushes certainly like snails. The problem I have here is that the blackbirds continually chase the thrushes away...
I suspect it's been mentioned more than once @Fairygirl
It's certainly true that hogs will eat slugs as will frogs but it's too small a part of their diet to rely on them to rid you of our slimey friends. OTOH, if people believe a healthy population of both frogs and hogs helps, it's perhaps not a bad thing as gardeners are more likely to encourage both these into their gardens. By the time they realise it's not quite that simple, they will be so "into" the hogs and frogs, that they will continue to offer both a suitable habitat. I too have found that the Thrushes are so often forced out by the Blackbirds. Doesn't seem to be an easy answer to that one. I don't know what the population figures are for Blackbird v Thrush in the UK as a whole?
I have no qualms in killing slugs or snails as they can cause untold damage in a relatively short time to expensive plants. Usually I'll either throw them up onto the shed or garage for the birds although when there's too many for the birds, a hefty size 10 dispenses with them rather quickly
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Possibly the same with birds, although thrushes certainly like snails. The problem I have here is that the blackbirds continually chase the thrushes away...
I live in west central Scotland - not where that photo is...
It's certainly true that hogs will eat slugs as will frogs but it's too small a part of their diet to rely on them to rid you of our slimey friends. OTOH, if people believe a healthy population of both frogs and hogs helps, it's perhaps not a bad thing as gardeners are more likely to encourage both these into their gardens. By the time they realise it's not quite that simple, they will be so "into" the hogs and frogs, that they will continue to offer both a suitable habitat.
I too have found that the Thrushes are so often forced out by the Blackbirds. Doesn't seem to be an easy answer to that one. I don't know what the population figures are for Blackbird v Thrush in the UK as a whole?