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Slug/snails abundance

It's odd but this year we haven't really had to many issues with slugs/snails. We have seen slime trails and still have plenty of the really massive slugs about but I haven't had many plants get munched (compared with normal, there is still some plant damage but i can live with that) despite the really wet weather.
I saw some people in Wales complaining that slugs were really bad this year and I would have thought they'd be the same for everyone so it's puzzling. The only thing I can think of is with all the wet weather, the plants have grown stronger and can just cope better. 
Anyone else noticed if they are better/worse than usual? 

Posts

  • B3B3 Posts: 27,505
    More snails, fewer slugs. The tiny ones found the hostas, though. I've only seen two bigger slugs this year. But then, apart from a few hostas, I don't intentionally grow anything that they like to eat.
    In London. Keen but lazy.
  • BenCottoBenCotto Posts: 4,718
    Here in south Rutland the slugs and snails have been really abundant in the last moth. The lobelia Crystal Palace has been destroyed and some dahlias are looking very ragged. Some garden areas get higher infestation than others, despite growing the same plants, and one of the worst affected are pots placed on a sea of gravel - so much for the advice that grit and gravel is a mollusc deterrent. Fat black slugs have been particularly apparent.

    I do not want to kill the things with salt, scissors or garden boots so my resolution is to grow things that do not appeal to slugs and hope they’ll congregate in neighbours’ gardens where the menu is better.
    Rutland, England
  • FairygirlFairygirl Posts: 55,117
    For us in this part of the world, the winter was mild again, apart from the two sharp spells in December and March. Far too easy for slugs to be out and about and breeding even more rapidly than usual, so they've been far more abundant. 
    It's how it is here though - always gazillions of the ruddy things. 
    Wales probably had a milder than usual winter too, just like we did up here.

    Gravel doesn't stop them at all - and neither does grit or anything similar @BenCotto .  This pic was from a week or so ago - middle of the day. 20mm gravel, so you can get an idea of the size   :)

    It's a place where beautiful isn't enough of a word....



    I live in west central Scotland - not where that photo is...
  • fidgetbonesfidgetbones Posts: 17,618
    Giant slugs, thousands of snails here.  They are eating beans faster than I can.
  • thevictorianthevictorian Posts: 1,279
    I'm just remembering we did have quite a bit of damage at the start of the year, where they even ate the hydrangeas, but I guess the two months without rain we had before the downpours has probably delayed them a bit. We get plenty of the large slugs but I didn't think they were a problem with plants? We also have some randy hedgehogs patrolling the gardens at night.

    Normally we have a plague where they devour all the plants they aren't supposed to like. Last year they went through most of the foxgloves and had a decent go at the astrantia and new hardy geranium growth.
  • Plenty of Snails here ( coastal Somerset ) but very rarely any large slugs.  The most troublesome slugs are the little grey jobs which live in the soil.
  • Two slugs over here in the early hours of this morning, one on the kitchen floor, the other climbing up a kitchen cupboard  (fortunately not the big orange ones )
  • Songbird-2Songbird-2 Posts: 2,349
    Up here in the North East we haven't seen snails in the garden for years but slugs abound. I've done a slug patrol tonight found lots on the grass🤔 as well as in the borders. In the past, these would have been eaten up by the birds by the next morning but since our neighbour cut down his hedging by almost half, the birds have completely deserted the garden now - don't get any visitors😢  Despite finding the slugs though, as others have said, I have seen little damage done to the plants, most odd.
  • BenCottoBenCotto Posts: 4,718
    edited August 2023
    With their uncanny knack of homing in on plants they like such as dahlias and delphiniums, is it the case that slugs have a acute sense of smell?

    Fiurther, might it be the case that they’re even more adept at smelling each other? Where one leads the rest follow. This might help to explain why five identical dahlias planted at the same tine and in the same conditions are having such different outcomes. Two are flourishing, largely untouched, two have beed decimated by big black slugs, and the fifth might have had slug attention but it has also been trodden on twice
    Rutland, England
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