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Liming effect on slugs?
honeysuckle5
Posts: 8
in Talkback
After years of mulching my allotment beds, the soil is in great heart, but it is slug and snail paradise, despite every other organic method of control. I read in a very old gardening book that "slugs can't abide an alkaline soil" Is this true. My ph test shows a slightly acid soil. I am planning to lime this year. Can I expect a reduction in damage? Can't find much in modern books on this subject.
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Not sure how effective lime is but I'm going to try ground coffee beans next season. I've already started adding some to the compost heap as a brown layer.
I try to be organic but use blue pellets for slugs and snails
. After visiting the Southport Flower Show and talking to a group of experienced allotmenteers have decided to give ground coffee beans a try. Their advise, if planting veg in rows was to lay it in between the rows, slugs and snails apparently don't like crossing over ground coffee beans.
The allotmenteers were spot on, in identifying what was eating my tom's in the GH, I thought slugs and snails, but no, it was the caterpillar of a moth which only eats the fruit and not the leaves. I found the caterpillars today
You don't need to use ground beans, you can drink the coffee first and then use the coffee grounds.
When you don't even know who's in the team
S.Yorkshire/Derbyshire border
Tried that, they don't seem to care, I also put a 12" border of gravel right around the patio, it's for drainage really, but I thought the slugs wouldn't cross it because they don't like gravel clippings, they don't mind it at all!
Ground coffee whether unused or the dregs after use do not work for me, nor does grit or the other physical barriers. Growing in pots seems to have some deterent effect on slugs but not snails. One thing that has proved useful against snails has ben by Common Broom plant. They seem to find it irresidtible, and I find lots of them on the plant yet it is robust enough to survive. It has the double benefit of luring them away from the plants they might harm and of course I can collect loads of snails easily and quickly and then destroy them.
I suspect that if you put quicklime directly on the slugs it'd do for them. And anything else, including you!
Slugs don't go for pinks but the b******y rabbits do!
" ..they throw parties every night.."