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Slugs and Hostas
Lewis T
Posts: 31
My three Hostas around my water feature were riddled with slug/snail holes but my single Hosta, balanced on a pot in my stone sink bird bath was perfect. For the front edge I bought a large blue pottery casserole dish to try as an experiment, filled it with salted water and placed my good Hosta in the middle and it is still perfect. I then bought two steel washing up bowls for the other two and will bury them to the rims creating two more moats while they re-grow. See pic
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Posts
what a brilliantly simple idea I will try this, we have hostas round our small pond. I always put a layer of soot in my potato trenches then the potatoes and never have slug damage, I might try that on the soil around the veggies, don't know why I haven't thought of it before.
Salt kills slugs and snails so I thought I'd add extra protection, just in case snails can swim. Some people kill them by putting salt directly on the slugs but I keep a jar of salted water and a pair of tongs and drown them. I'm afraid after all the work of gardening I am not happy when they eat my plants. I use copper rings too but find thick copper pipes with four corners, making a rigid rectangle work just as well. My lettuces stayed slug free until the leaves extended across the pipes forming a bridge so now I keep using the outer leaves first. I have mentioned before I had a copper tank cut into three inch slices, turned the top over as copper is sharp and plant my carrots and beetroot in these. Copper tools are everlasting, but pricy, but it is said that if you rake the earth with copper instead of steel, the slugs do not smell the fresh soil. My daughter buys me copper tools for Xmas from 'Implementations'. I am building up a collection.