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slugs
Pela
Posts: 1
is cutting in half then leaving carcasses on grass for birds sufficient. Cannot bear slug pellets or treading on them. Ghastly enorumours Orange ones. How did they walk into my small enclosed back garden with no new plants from pots?
0
Posts
It sounds like either Arion ater or Arion rufus though a picture would help.
Though the big slugs often get the blame in the garden for causing damage, it's the smaller ones that really wreak havoc. If you don't want them about Pela, collect them up and bung them over the wall, but they are probably doing more good than harm by eating mostly dead vegetation in your garden. You just have to keep them away from young seedlings because they will eat those.
I like the mugshots pansyface. I now know that the usual suspects in my garden are the Spanish, Yellow and Black slugs.
Hi Pela, I wouldn't fancy cutting them in half, too messy. I collect them when I see them and drop them in a bucket with a little salt water in the bottom as I go, then they go in the bin.
Apart from seedlings or beer does anyone have any recommended slug attractors for when the nightly hunt with a head-torch starts. I'm thinking if I can draw them out the collection would be much easier.
Poor slugs, old country saying,
If they are black, put them back
If they are grey, keep them at bay
The big orange ones are closely related to the black ones or are juvenile black ones, they are on our side. (mostly).
I find the easiest way to collect slugs Kitty is to have a grassy path cut low around areas I want to protect. It is then easy to get them with a torch just after dark as they try to cross it.
I don't kill them, I find just moving them 30-40 feet is enough that those particularly ones are unlikely to come back.
I think I'm going to start a 'Love a slug' campaign.
Hi Gemma, I have a paving path between the border and lawn. It's a narrow border alongside the fence where Mr K grows his peas (the only gardening he does) and I try to keep it clear of slugs for his pride and joy.
I used to collect them up and tip them over the road in a patch of trees/shrubs facing us (no houses). I found that by the time I'd finished collecting half of them would have gone, "the great escape" so that's why the salt water.
I bet you have a lovely garden pansyface, Leopard Slugs only inhabit the best and most lovely gardens.
Pansyface, thank you for the ref. Now bookmarked for easy future reference.
Slug hunting is my new hobby. I want to get as many as I can before summer when it gets dark so late I have to go to bed for work. I used to drop them in cheap beer to drown them but lately I've been keeping them in a container with tightly fitting top and freezing them. I keep thinking I could collect them and then feed them to ducks but never get around to it. My husband hasn't caught on to the slugs in the freezer yet. (I generally remove them in the morning and later empty the dead and defrosted ones onto the compost bin. I feel kind of bad about killing them-- it can't be good karma-- but they cause such destruction. At least it's targeted destruction and I'm not putting other things in danger by use of slug pellets. I've NEVER seen a bird eat a slug, even when I placed live slugs on the bird table with blackbirds and starlings all over. The slugs just crawl down eventually.
Maybe they didn't recognize them as they were not in a usual slug place. Or maybe my neighbourhood birds are either spoiled or stupid. I've also had them ignore live brandling worms I put out for them (the ones that throw themselves out the compost bin when I open the lid) and again I watched them crawl away as the birds ate dried mealworms.
Kitty, we moved into our house last summer and the garden was full of what I think is Russian comfrey. I don't particularly like it and it does spread but the slugs and snails seem to adore it. As such I have pulled loads of it up but left some to keep the blighters away from other plnts. Just googling it found this article http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/article-1048976/Comfrey-compost-The-superfood-plants.html which says similar.
Thanks for the tip TCbythesea, interesting to see what a useful plant comfrey is. My only concern is how invasive it would be in a small garden, sounds like a bit of a thug and having such deep roots probably not good to contain in pots like I do with mint.