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Talkback: Hostas and slugs
Hello, my slug problem is pretty huge even though I have all sorts of wildlife. I have started putting roughly crushed eggshells amongst and around my hostas in the hope that the slugs and snails won't like to manoevre through or past them. I save my eggshells, put them in the dishwasher, then into the AGA to dry them completely and make them as hard as possible. Then crush and scatter. I am also trying this with my veg patch. We'll see what happens, I have my fingers crossed.
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Here is my views on how to deal with snails, and slugs.
If you have a lot of slugs and snails in your garden as I have, and enjoy watching the birds and wildlife I find it best only to grow plants that snails don't like in the garden, such as Day Lilly's and Penstemon, Snowdrops and Daffodils. I do grow a couple of Hostas successfuly in pots, I find the best way is to surround them with copper tape or rings. I have also found Hostas, unlike other plants don't mind standing in water,so can be grow in an over sized deep saucer of water, as slugs cannot swim! Just make sure as the plants grow they do not touch the wall, or anything that can be used as a bridge.
Also worth a try is spraying a circle of WD40 around the pot. as slugs and snails do not like to cross this. I have used this on pots used to grow salad leaves, and find once the pot is sprayed the effects last for several weeks.
Hope this helps
Liz
I have too many hostas for copper/eggshells and so on and very persistent slugs. I have, however, used wildlife friendly slug pellets for several years and find them very good. I have cats, dogs, loads of birds, hedgehogs, amphibians and insects.
You need to be organised and scatter the first few pellets around susceptible plants in late winter or early spring to get them as they emerge from hiberation and then every couple of weeks to catch the stragglers and the newly hatched before they have time to breed or feed. I start on Valentine's Day as it's easy to remember.
You can also spray with a garlic solution as they don't seem to like that either.
I only have a few hostas but I put pistachio nut shells around them, slugs don't seems to like crawling over them and don't like the salt. Plus we get to scoff nuts in a good cause.
I have some hostas which I hate the slugs getting too. I start putting down some slug pellets just before the plant emerges. Last year I tried some nemaslug treatment as I had heard Monty Don talking about this. It was great I didn't apply it until May it gives 6 weeks of cover this also helps the new growth of other plants emerging. I am just about to apply some today as the ground temperature is ready and we had some very heavy rain yesterday which is the ideal time to apply it.
What I would really like is to have some frogs move in as they would certainly help a lot.
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