It's like they have sonar in those little teloscopic feelers! Once a plant leaves the ground, the alarm is raised and the troops roar into their, well, slow slimy onslaught. This is war folks and it's raging along our very soil! eeek!!
My main problem is that I am trying to put food out for a hedgehog (which I thought was supposed to eat slugs!) but the slugs just colonise the dish each night. I have tried putting eggshells and 2 proprietary products that are SUPPOSED to keep slugs off but with no luck, and last night I even put the dish in the middle of a small pool of water, but they STILL got at it. I don't want to put pellets down as I don't want to poison the rest of the wildlife.
You can read everywhere that you should collect the slugs and snails, with a torch, with newspaper sheets, cabbage leaves... BUT nobody tells me what to do with the collected animals. I don't want to kill them, I don't have chicken or ducks, so what to do with them?????????????? I normally collect them and bring them to a park round the corner but I'm afraid that they come back....
This nematode business seems to be a very expensive method of attempting to control molluscs. I find that it is just as good to go on slug and snail hunting expeditions every evening, gathering them up and giving them a last 'party' of old stale beer, and they go out fighting drunk, happy and lose ANY sense of direction for finding their way back to my allotment ! Failing this, I would get a badger and let it loose around the garden. The pet badger I had, was quite fat on the resulting feasting, but also dug up with scientific precision all the bean and pea seeds so geometrically placed ! You pays yer money and takes yer chances.
I watched a programme where a couple boiled a head of crushed garlic in a litre of water until it had reduced by at least half. Let it cool, sieve it, bottle it and keep the concentrate in the fridge. Use two cap fulls in 5 litres of water and spray onto your plants, all the way to the base. You can burn the plants if you use too much but this did work.
I read somewhere that slugs live for around 5 years and just travel back if you chuck them over the fence (I have woodland beyond my fence!) so I go 'slug-hunting' at night with the old headtorch and trowel for halving and digging back into the ground as compost. I have noticed a reductionover the years in the population, but it is hard on my back as it is quite engrossing once you get going!
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with a torch, with newspaper sheets, cabbage leaves...
BUT nobody tells me what to do with the collected animals.
I don't want to kill them, I don't have chicken or ducks, so what to do with them??????????????
I normally collect them and bring them to a park round the corner but I'm afraid that they come back....
I watched a programme where a couple boiled a head of crushed garlic in a litre of water until it had reduced by at least half. Let it cool, sieve it, bottle it and keep the concentrate in the fridge. Use two cap fulls in 5 litres of water and spray onto your plants, all the way to the base. You can burn the plants if you use too much but this did work.
I read somewhere that slugs live for around 5 years and just travel back if you chuck them over the fence (I have woodland beyond my fence!) so I go 'slug-hunting' at night with the old headtorch and trowel for halving and digging back into the ground as compost. I have noticed a reductionover the years in the population, but it is hard on my back as it is quite engrossing once you get going!