If your slugs have gone AWOL...

I once tried the beer method. The idea is you leave beer out which they can't resist and they fall in and drown. Don't you believe it! I carefully put out the beer and waited. Next morning no beer, lots of chomped leaves but not a body in sight just hundreds of slimy trails. Rather than snail and slug armageddon I'd put on the party of the century lol.

It's been too cold here. Have you ever seen that copper sticky tape with 'teeth' at the bottom - absolutely great for pots. I never use slug pellets as I am too afraid to poison birds and hedgehogs- just gloves, a bucket, then take to the local fields near the badger sett, they soon hoover them up.

We had a large garden in the UK, and our neighbour had a paddock at the bottom. We were unable to fight an old covenant, and he sold to a builder. They put a bungalow less than 5 feet from our mature mixed hedge and border. Didn't bother us too much as there was a mature hawthorn hiding it, and the fence was high enough.

But from the day the elderly couple moved in - whom we welcomed with a card and a nice bouquet of our best garden flowers- we got letters asking us to cut the trees, practically every week. Two pages without punctuation or taking breath. I went twice, very friendly- to explain that we of course we not keen on the building, and shocked about how close the bungalow was, and that the trees respected our privacy. Made the point, quietly, that the trees were there since 1921 when the house was built, were there when they first came to see the house, when they came to see it again, on the day they signed the contract and the day they'd moved. Had they not noticed them, and noticed how it made their kitchen dark. Yes, she said, but that bungalow was quite a bit cheaper than the others! Well, I do wonder why, as it is identical!!!

We were away on hols and it rained for a couple of days. Daughter picked up the phone 'It's Mrs X from next door. Could you come over straight away to pick up YOUR slugs- they are all over our patio'. Daughter very politely asked how she knew they were ours and Mrs X replied 'well they're bound to be aint it as it's you that's got the big garden'. Daughter politely said she we were away and that she should ring the Council to make a complaint.
I did go and have a quiet chat when we got back - but as they both turned nasty I made a polite retreat and left it at that. Our house is now a childrens' nursery - so the laughter of the little ones must keep them entertained.

Checked on my rows of salad crop seedlings yesterday, I had stupidly forgotten about slugs, so they have scoffed the lot. I will re-sow today between the heavy showers. I am afraid that, having tried all the barrier repellents with no success, I shall be using organic pellets.

I had to laugh at your post, granjura. We had a similar experience with our previous n-d-n, who was, to put it mildly, a nasty old baggage. Her son used to come a help her with her garden and I heard him say one day "You've got some nettles here, mum, I'll yank them out." "Oh," she said "they're not mine - they'll be hers next door - just throw them back over the hedge!" I had no nettles on my side of the hedge, or in the garden generally, but back over the hedge they came! DH put them in our bin anyway as we were, by that time, suffering severe battle fatigue as a result of her antics and had put the house on the market.

We have lived in our new house for six months and - Shhhh! - I haven't seen a single slug or snail yet! It would be too optimistic to think there aren't any hereabouts - they were a real nuisance in our old garden. I found the copper tape really good for stopping them gobbling my hostas.

I use the copper tape that sticks to the side of pots to protect my hostas. I spent most of our first few summers here slinging slugs and snails over the wall to the field on the other side. Sadly, it now has houses on and the owners object!

We have recently acquired four lovely hens, who are allowed to roam the garden for quite a lot of time. They have loved scuffing about in the dead leaves etc along the edges of the borders, and are doing a wonderful job in reducing the slug problem hugely.

So I think most of our slugs have been converted into eggs!

You may have all the slugs but we seem to have an abundance of snails! Have just looked on Wiki for the collective noun for snails : escargatoire or rout or walk! Do hens eat snails? At least the thrushes enjoy them.

Hens love them - when we had free range pet hens in our garden in UK they ate all the snails and slugs, and we had got rid of all the moss in the lawn + lots of lovely eggs.

Slugs converted into eggs! I don't think I'll be able to look at an egg in the same way ever again!!!

Think about it as meat converted into sperm or ovae.

Please!! I have a very sensitive digestive system!

Sorry

I read somewhere that if you gather up all the slugs in your garden and take them away somewhere, they always find their way back!

Yuck, who would pick them up and take them anywhere ?

The chap over the road has a road running at the back of his garden and he goes out with a torch and a bucket at night, gathers up all the slugs and chucks them over his hedge onto the road. He always maintains that they come back!

I saw on Gardeners World a Hosta grower who, amazingly had a slug and snail free garden. He said the secret was to start laying the pellets out very early in the year, before the bastards have a chance to breed. 0fcourse he did not use that phrase exactly, being the BBC. Any way I did, and I have had a lot less this year. Good luck

I cannot think of one good reason for slugs to exist. They're vile.
I used Nemaslug on my garden a couple of months go with very positive results.

Snails in abundance here, all the wet weather? They have got in everything except a hanging basket. 2 buried jars of lager got loads but there are still loads. I throw them down to a flower bed 6 ft down the hill but they are all back up. (My daughters neighbour throws his over the fence into her garden). Yes I saw a big box in Aldi for £4 'stop slugs' but as my patch is only 3' x 3' it seemed a bit much!

Do they have a good use? Like wasps they seem a pest.
Whilst on the subject I hung a lady bird house and wasps have nested in it?

Put them on a stone or a hard path and tread on them! Birds will eat them and the shells can be swept up and put on the compost.

Your wellies will survive.

I just put them in the green bin, it keeps them off the plants, they have plenty to eat and then the council take them away!

I thought I'd drown the b*****s in a bucket. No joy. They climbed out. Didn't realise they were amphibious.

i put them in a bucket of salt water.

best idea but don't have a green bin, put them in someone else's?