I lay boards down at the edges of my growing areas. Then flip them over before watering in early morning and remove/dispose of the slugs and snails. It is more work but one less cost and one less chemical.
I used to get slugs but I now do a more natural mixed up planting system. I grow mixed up perennial varieties alongside annuals and then instead of using fabric I did one initial covering of decomposing mulch and then each spring do a chop and drop System with a good sprinkle of old chicken manure. This eventually built up and improved the soil structure, microbiology and mycelium. As the soil biology improved the plants were a lot stronger and able to resist most pests and the soil became an unfavourable environment for weed seeds and struggled to germinate. Another point that I have found helped with this system is through the year when I have dead headed/cut back and tidied up I just throw back on the ground and it give the few remaining slugs something to eat so they tend to leave my flowers alone. Love your videos... keep up the good work. Xx
I use a flashlight and one big water bottle with water and laundry detergent, pick them by hand and drown in the soapy water. You have to do it many times and usually they can be seen on the plant top, from 10:30 on, at night. Good hunting to all. There are also particular weeds that they enjoy to lay their eggs at the base, around 50 a pop. In France those eggs are harvest, spiced and sold like caviar.
In my garden hostas and sedum are slug magnets. Just be alert that you may need to do much hand picking to keep the slugs down. I've tried many remedies. Hand picking at night with a light and bag to dispatch them works best. Good luck getting rid of them!
@@Crocs4cats That was prime slug party time! If you're seen, just explain you're ridding the neighborhood of slugs. Several neighbors have seen fewer slugs because of my "hunting". It's a win-win for everyone but the slugs.
I use organic slug pellets, beer traps and night time slug hunts to control mine. Also found crushed eggshells work, but you would have to eat a lot of eggs to cover your field! Also hear good things about wool pellets and garlic spray as a deterrent, but never used. Hope you are successful, I know how disheartening slug damage is.
Charles Dowding of No Dig fame did say straw mulch can encourage slugs in our wet UK climate.. I use well rotted horse manure to mulch my beds - but that has loads of weed seeds! Good luck getting rid of them organically xx
I’ve had loads of slug damage too, Especially the dahlias! They just love this weather, the love membrane as well as mulch. I use sluggo and it works but you do have to rescatter it every few days when there’s heavy rain as it just washes away. Good luck x
A friend of mine has been doing experiments with copper wire, which appears to work pretty well for slowing down slugs. What he does is wrap a piece of wire around a cardboard tube which he puts around the plant. This seems to be working well for him. I wonder whether you could simply make rings of copper wire and drop one around every plant, or lay straight back and forth between each row and plant? Another thing that apparently helps is encouraging amphibians (frogs and toads). Maybe a frog pond near your garden would be a nice, organic long-term solution? Good luck!!! 🙂
I use Bonide’s Bug & Slug Killer. It’s organic. I also heard beer trap works, use the cheapest beer you can get. I read somewhere sprinkling epsom salt around the plant base works as well.
I’ve just watched another TH-cam channel called Plant Abundance and he reckons Epsom Salt is great for the soil and is good for slug/snail problems. It might be worth a go. I think the word Salt scares people but this is magnesium which is good for the garden apparently.
Agree with TheBoys Allotment Plot....try Nemaslug, biological control, one application lasts 6 weeks, and is watered in. Only downside is cost...£12 ish for 40m2 but you might get it cheaper as you’d get in bulk? And for you lost plants is lost money anyway....
Oh no! I just used the old goose bedding (straw, pine shavings and poo) all over my ranunculus bed! Will race out and get Sluggo BEFORE they can destroy all the little green leaves coming up!!! Thank you!
Slugs are such a pain. I feel for you, they can ruin a crop so quickly too. I've bought an iron based repellant that I'm yet to try. Slugs and snail are definitely my worst enemy in the garden. I love Hector 💜 what an absolute star he is. I hope he enjoyed his dunk in his pool 😊 it sure looks like he was having a great time.
Slugs have been eating some of my seedlings recently too. They seem to favour the cosmos most of all! I am trying out wool slug pellets and will see how they go.
Hi Sarah, Im just about to plant out my Dahlia's and wondered what you used to make the template in your weed membrane? I wasnt going to use it for the Dahlias unitl I just seen you have.
I seem to live in a snail preserve... 🤦🏼♀️ I live far away from you in Central Texas, under many large Oak Trees. So most of my gardens are Woodland gardens, and the snails LOOOOVE IT ! Augggghh! Last week I put out a small fern under a tree. I left in the pot to be planted the next day. The next morning I came out, and that poor fern had been striped bare! Not one leaf left!! They were nice enough to leave the woody stems tho... Those darn snails struck again!! However, I don't use any poisons, as there are many forms of wildlife that enjoy the snails as food. Like Firefly larvae. The Firefly larvae live for a year in leaf mulch, and one of their main food sources is snails! I don't think your area has Fireflies, but I know y'all do have other things that like to eat slugs, like Hedgehogs, I'm guessing... Anyway, I decided to use this new fern as my bait for a risky snail experiment. I've heard that snails & slugs won't walk across sharp sand. But I've never tried using it. Luckily, I just happen to already have a bag of crushed granite sand. So I nursed that fern back to full leafy health, which only took 10 days, and then dared to plant it in that very same spot which it had previously been accosted... I can only hope it wasn't feeling traumatized for returning to the scene of the crime!!! I then made a complete surround barrier of the granite sand. Granted, my original plan was to just put a 2 inch wide band around it, but in the moment, I opted for a 4 inch barrier. I think I was feeling guilty about using that pretty fern as bait! The next morning I went out to check on it, and VOILÁ !!! IT WORKED!!!!!!!! IT WAS STILL 100% LEAFY !!!!! ZERO leaf damage! And I know those snails were lurking about the night before bcuz we got a nice rain during the night, and they do seem to love a nice rain! Well, it's now one week later and my little painted fern is still there, sitting in perfect health!! Yay!!!!! This means I can use the sand barrier to plant out future seedlings with no worries! The bonus is that the granite sand has lots of good nutrients that will be helpful to the soil. It's a win-win! My next experiment will be trying out the red lava sand in this same way. I hope it is sharp enough!! For anyone who doesn't want to poison the wildlife via slug & snails pesticides, I highly recommend using the sharp sand barrier method!! And for everyone who has Fireflies and Hedgehogs, just a heads up - They are both disappearing from our landscapes. Unfortunately, they are headed for extinction due to many reasons, garden pesticides being in the top 2 reasons. Let's not let these garden creatures go extinct!! I want my grandkids to experience the magic of Fireflies in the Summertime! Don't you? 💡--💡--💡--💡--💡--💡
I hear you. Sluggo kills amphibians when they eat the slugs that have dined on Sluggo. So,. it'll.kill off the very creatures (toads, frogs,. salamanders) that gobble up slugs. If I can't borrow some ducks for a day or two, I control slugs and snails by laying out a few flattened cardboard boxes around the yard. Two days later the underside of cardboard is loaded with slugs and snails. I chuck the whole cardboard in the green recycling bin. If you've no green bin service, scrape the slugs and snails into a bucket of water with a little added detergent. Like 1 tsp dish detergent/5 gallons water. It kills them quickly.
I collect seaweed, let it be washed in the rain and then run over it with my lawn mower. I sprinkle this around me garden and so far my dahlia and cosmos are very much thriving.
thank´s so much for sharing your beatifull farm! i have problems with slugs too, i can´t use any kind of mulch but sometimes i put carboard. i´m starting my first cut flower garden and i am wondering if you have a video about fertilizing.
i use plants to attracted the slugs too! so when they are eating there at night i can pick them. here lettuce its cheap and effective. sorry for my english
I am so sorry! Have never had a slug problem either and this year and pretty sure a slug all of my marigolds down to a nub! They didn't touch any of my other flowers or my vegetables so I don't think it was a rabbit or anything...
There are many warnings online about some slug baits containing ingredients that are toxic to worms, cats, and dogs. One of the articles I pulled up was written by Ann Lovejoy. I don't know if this is true at all, so I hope people will thoroughly do their research.
Growing up my mom used fresh straw under her strawberries and she always had slugs. She had them no where else in her flowerbeds or veggie garden. Me sister and I got the pleasure of picking the slugs and squishing them all of the driveway in our rubber boots. So don’t use straw as a mulch is what my lesson was and just wash my strawberries. Thankfully I have never had a slug problem, (knock on wood) 😉 so get rid of the straw and put it on your compost pile and let it breakdown. I bet you will not have the slug problem any more. Good luck!
I think it’s not the straw by itself coursing the problem rathe cover over the straw that creates perfect environment for slugs. You would have to compare side by side.I lost hundreds of plant to bugs, giving up on all organic hipe
I would second the nematodes - longer lasting as you boost the natural population and they will distribute themselves throughout the whole bed without you needing to lift the membrane
I lay boards down at the edges of my growing areas. Then flip them over before watering in early morning and remove/dispose of the slugs and snails. It is more work but one less cost and one less chemical.
I used to get slugs but I now do a more natural mixed up planting system. I grow mixed up perennial varieties alongside annuals and then instead of using fabric I did one initial covering of decomposing mulch and then each spring do a chop and drop System with a good sprinkle of old chicken manure. This eventually built up and improved the soil structure, microbiology and mycelium. As the soil biology improved the plants were a lot stronger and able to resist most pests and the soil became an unfavourable environment for weed seeds and struggled to germinate. Another point that I have found helped with this system is through the year when I have dead headed/cut back and tidied up I just throw back on the ground and it give the few remaining slugs something to eat so they tend to leave my flowers alone. Love your videos... keep up the good work. Xx
I use a flashlight and one big water bottle with water and laundry detergent, pick them by hand and drown in the soapy water. You have to do it many times and usually they can be seen on the plant top, from 10:30 on, at night. Good hunting to all. There are also particular weeds that they enjoy to lay their eggs at the base, around 50 a pop. In France those eggs are harvest, spiced and sold like caviar.
What an amazing view your farm has even when its kind of grey and dreary
In my garden hostas and sedum are slug magnets. Just be alert that you may need to do much hand picking to keep the slugs down. I've tried many remedies. Hand picking at night with a light and bag to dispatch them works best. Good luck getting rid of them!
I went out at 2am to catch them this morning! Definitely makes a difference if I do it every couple of days. I just hope the neighbours don’t see me😂
@@Crocs4cats That was prime slug party time! If you're seen, just explain you're ridding the neighborhood of slugs. Several neighbors have seen fewer slugs because of my "hunting". It's a win-win for everyone but the slugs.
I use organic slug pellets, beer traps and night time slug hunts to control mine. Also found crushed eggshells work, but you would have to eat a lot of eggs to cover your field! Also hear good things about wool pellets and garlic spray as a deterrent, but never used. Hope you are successful, I know how disheartening slug damage is.
Charles Dowding of No Dig fame did say straw mulch can encourage slugs in our wet UK climate.. I use well rotted horse manure to mulch my beds - but that has loads of weed seeds!
Good luck getting rid of them organically xx
I’ve had loads of slug damage too, Especially the dahlias! They just love this weather, the love membrane as well as mulch. I use sluggo and it works but you do have to rescatter it every few days when there’s heavy rain as it just washes away. Good luck x
I use a fine straw mulch. It’s mineralised too and the slugs and snails now never ear them.
A friend of mine has been doing experiments with copper wire, which appears to work pretty well for slowing down slugs. What he does is wrap a piece of wire around a cardboard tube which he puts around the plant. This seems to be working well for him. I wonder whether you could simply make rings of copper wire and drop one around every plant, or lay straight back and forth between each row and plant? Another thing that apparently helps is encouraging amphibians (frogs and toads). Maybe a frog pond near your garden would be a nice, organic long-term solution? Good luck!!! 🙂
The problem putting it right next to holes where plants are-is they head to the wrong place-put around edges!
I can’t live without sluggo!! It works great! They make sluggo plus that works for earwigs too
If the sluggo work for you, to save bending, roll three or four down a piece of tube (like a piece of waste pipe) 🙂
I use Bonide’s Bug & Slug Killer. It’s organic. I also heard beer trap works, use the cheapest beer you can get. I read somewhere sprinkling epsom salt around the plant base works as well.
I’ve just watched another TH-cam channel called Plant Abundance and he reckons Epsom Salt is great for the soil and is good for slug/snail problems. It might be worth a go. I think the word Salt scares people but this is magnesium which is good for the garden apparently.
Agree with TheBoys Allotment Plot....try Nemaslug, biological control, one application lasts 6 weeks, and is watered in. Only downside is cost...£12 ish for 40m2 but you might get it cheaper as you’d get in bulk? And for you lost plants is lost money anyway....
Oh no! I just used the old goose bedding (straw, pine shavings and poo) all over my ranunculus bed! Will race out and get Sluggo BEFORE they can destroy all the little green leaves coming up!!! Thank you!
Slugs are such a pain. I feel for you, they can ruin a crop so quickly too.
I've bought an iron based repellant that I'm yet to try. Slugs and snail are definitely my worst enemy in the garden.
I love Hector 💜 what an absolute star he is. I hope he enjoyed his dunk in his pool 😊 it sure looks like he was having a great time.
Slugs have been eating some of my seedlings recently too. They seem to favour the cosmos most of all! I am trying out wool slug pellets and will see how they go.
Hi Sarah, Im just about to plant out my Dahlia's and wondered what you used to make the template in your weed membrane? I wasnt going to use it for the Dahlias unitl I just seen you have.
I seem to live in a snail preserve... 🤦🏼♀️
I live far away from you in Central Texas, under many large Oak Trees. So most of my gardens are Woodland gardens, and the snails LOOOOVE IT ! Augggghh!
Last week I put out a small fern under a tree.
I left in the pot to be planted the next day.
The next morning I came out, and that poor fern had been striped bare! Not one leaf left!! They were nice enough to leave the woody stems tho...
Those darn snails struck again!!
However, I don't use any poisons, as there are many forms of wildlife that enjoy the snails as food. Like Firefly larvae. The Firefly larvae live for a year in leaf mulch, and one of their main food sources is snails! I don't think your area has Fireflies, but I know y'all do have other things that like to eat slugs, like Hedgehogs, I'm guessing...
Anyway, I decided to use this new fern as my bait for a risky snail experiment.
I've heard that snails & slugs won't walk across sharp sand.
But I've never tried using it.
Luckily, I just happen to already have a bag of crushed granite sand.
So I nursed that fern back to full leafy health, which only took 10 days, and then dared to plant it in that very same spot which it had previously been accosted... I can only hope it wasn't feeling traumatized for returning to the scene of the crime!!!
I then made a complete surround barrier of the granite sand. Granted, my original plan was to just put a 2 inch wide band around it, but in the moment, I opted for a 4 inch barrier. I think I was feeling guilty about using that pretty fern as bait!
The next morning I went out to check on it, and VOILÁ !!!
IT WORKED!!!!!!!!
IT WAS STILL 100% LEAFY !!!!!
ZERO leaf damage!
And I know those snails were lurking about the night before bcuz we got a nice rain during the night, and they do seem to love a nice rain!
Well, it's now one week later and my little painted fern is still there, sitting in perfect health!! Yay!!!!!
This means I can use the sand barrier to plant out future seedlings with no worries!
The bonus is that the granite sand has lots of good nutrients that will be helpful to the soil. It's a win-win!
My next experiment will be trying out the red lava sand in this same way. I hope it is sharp enough!!
For anyone who doesn't want to poison the wildlife via slug & snails pesticides, I highly recommend using the sharp sand barrier method!!
And for everyone who has Fireflies and Hedgehogs, just a heads up -
They are both disappearing from our landscapes. Unfortunately, they are headed for extinction due to many reasons, garden pesticides being in the top 2 reasons.
Let's not let these garden creatures go extinct!!
I want my grandkids to experience the magic of Fireflies in the Summertime!
Don't you?
💡--💡--💡--💡--💡--💡
I hear you. Sluggo kills amphibians when they eat the slugs that have dined on Sluggo. So,. it'll.kill off the very creatures (toads, frogs,. salamanders) that gobble up slugs.
If I can't borrow some ducks for a day or two, I control slugs and snails by laying out a few flattened cardboard boxes around the yard. Two days later the underside of cardboard is loaded with slugs and snails. I chuck the whole cardboard in the green recycling bin. If you've no green bin service, scrape the slugs and snails into a bucket of water with a little added detergent. Like 1 tsp dish detergent/5 gallons water. It kills them quickly.
@@janinawaz4596 nice!
And let's not forget the dreaded melting of the slugs with SALT !!
I collect seaweed, let it be washed in the rain and then run over it with my lawn mower. I sprinkle this around me garden and so far my dahlia and cosmos are very much thriving.
I to suffered with slugs this year. Slug pellets knocked them out overnight!!! Hope you have the same experience
I always rewind several times when there is piggy content in your videos! :D
thank´s so much for sharing your beatifull farm! i have problems with slugs too, i can´t use any kind of mulch but sometimes i put carboard. i´m starting my first cut flower garden and i am wondering if you have a video about fertilizing.
i use plants to attracted the slugs too! so when they are eating there at night i can pick them. here lettuce its cheap and effective. sorry for my english
I am so sorry! Have never had a slug problem either and this year and pretty sure a slug all of my marigolds down to a nub! They didn't touch any of my other flowers or my vegetables so I don't think it was a rabbit or anything...
Oh they loooove marigolds 😕
Nematodes would be a good investment here, it is possible to make your own for further application. Saved my strawberry patch and veggies last year.
There are many warnings online about some slug baits containing ingredients that are toxic to worms, cats, and dogs. One of the articles I pulled up was written by Ann Lovejoy. I don't know if this is true at all, so I hope people will thoroughly do their research.
i use sluggo pellets here in usa. You might try dishes of beer, since the love it and then drown. Such
I hope the dahlias recover from the slug damage! 🤞
Growing up my mom used fresh straw under her strawberries and she always had slugs. She had them no where else in her flowerbeds or veggie garden. Me sister and I got the pleasure of picking the slugs and squishing them all of the driveway in our rubber boots. So don’t use straw as a mulch is what my lesson was and just wash my strawberries. Thankfully I have never had a slug problem, (knock on wood) 😉 so get rid of the straw and put it on your compost pile and let it breakdown. I bet you will not have the slug problem any more. Good luck!
Cute !
Beer - they love it and drown in the dishes
So you don’t find the same issue with slugs under weedmat / weed membrane?
I think it’s not the straw by itself coursing the problem rathe cover over the straw that creates perfect environment for slugs. You would have to compare side by side.I lost hundreds of plant to bugs, giving up on all organic hipe
I have to say I read the title and thought this did not end well
Ferramol is slugpellets
Woohoo Hector
I would second the nematodes - longer lasting as you boost the natural population and they will distribute themselves throughout the whole bed without you needing to lift the membrane
Ducks love slugs!
Hector Spa all day long! 😂🤣😂🤣
Use sheep's wool the slugs don't like it
Have you thought about getting some ducks? They love slugs, bleh