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Slugs and Roofing Felt
Chris 7
Posts: 102
I run an organic garden quite successfully except for a slug problem.
Last year I heard about a technique involving putting roofing felt around each susceptible plant. The theory is that the slugs hate the roughness of the felt and its smell !
Has anybody heard of this method ? and if so, how successful was it ?
Thanks
0
Posts
That would probably work quite well. Just a thought though, how organic would roof felt be, given that it may well have a fair amount of tar products on it? Another way of doing it is fine Horti grit and garden sand. Again, the combination of rough and dry puts them right off.
Hi Chris, not used it to deter slugs. However I use roofing felt for reptile surveys every year. We very often find slugs happily living under it and laying eggs. So I'm a little dubious in the long run if it will solve a slug problem.
The organic slug slayers are these two:
Encourage them at every opportunity for a slug free veg patch.
I have a few frogs and also a few leopard slugs (which eat other slugs). I wish I had slow worms, but if I'm lucky they may go into my compost heaps !
I don't like the idea of tar products so I may abandon this idea !
Thanks for all your help.
Get you compost going and you might well get the slow worms. They are a bit of anomaly though, they don't need much but they are not great colonisers, so their distribution can be locally very patchy.
All we can do is provide what they like and keep our fingers crossed. I've been getting the odd one or two for years in the garden, but not a big population so far.
Funnily enough leaving out the roofing felt for slow worms or corrugated tin in a sunny spot will help them.
Someone left a sheet of metal roofing on the verge of the car park for some while. One hot day local children lifted it intending using for a den roof. They came rushing to me in great excitement as underneath was a large family of slow worms, parents and babes. They left the roofing where it was.
This magnificent specimen was crossing a neighbour's lawn. The phone went and I arrived in time to take the photograph before it disappeared into the border. hat's Dave's hand to give some idea of its size
The grass snake is a baby about 12" long and was struggling to cross the drive into the Park, the adder, also a baby, was rather annoyed with my dog who thought it was a stick on the old railway track we often walk. Fortunately I was able to call Scout off before any damage was done to either of them and I removed the adder to the long grass.
The slow worms prefer dry, the grass snakes prefer ponds. There's a large pond close by the drive into the park and I've seen adults but they move like lightning. The young grass snake was in trouble with the rough surface of the drive and I rescued him before he would have got run over. Same with the adder, it isn't often you see them in the open let alone a frequently used track. Used to see them sunning themselves on top of walls when out on my horse which they took no notice of. A camera and a lively horse though was not a good combination