You’ve carefully nurtured your darling seedlings for weeks. You’ve transplanted them into their forever home and they’re looking perky in the sunlight. Life is good. Or so you thought. The next day you check on your little green babies and all that is left is bare stems. You let your coffee mug smash on the floor, look to the skies and cry ‘WHYYY?’.
Chances are, the culprits were slugs or snails.
Most gardens suffer from some degree of slug and snail damage. These pests are particularly fond of soft, succulent vegetables and herbs, and can quickly decimate a crop. While there are a number of chemical controls available, these can be harmful to other wildlife and pollinators, and require you to spend money, something we try to avoid here! I’ll take you through a few of my favourite methods for preventing slugs and snails, including the use of barriers, traps and natural predators.
Barriers
Keeping an eye on your plants by checking under their leaves and round pots regularly is a must if you want to protect your crop. That being said, you can’t sit all day watching your plants. But we can dream.
If you are happy to spend a bit of money, diatomaceous earth is a great option for deterring slugs and snails. This is a powdery substance that you can find at most garden stores. Simply sprinkle it around your plants and the pests will stay away.
Slugs and snails can’t cross over sharp objects, so eggshells make for a great barrier against them. Crush them into mixed size pieces and spread them across the top of the soil. Crushed eggshells give the added bonus of slowly releasing calcium into the soil.
Used coffee grounds from a cafetiere or coffee machine are also a fantastic natural barrier when spread on top of the soil and is another friend with benefits: coffee grounds also help to keep away rats and mice, they are rich in nitrogen, and also contain potassium and phosphorus, vital nutrients for healthy plants.
For seedlings that have just been transplanted, I like to use large, clear plastic bottles cut in half, and place them over the seedlings, pushing them into the soil to keep them in place for a solid physical barrier. Poke a few little holes in the top for air to get in, and leave them covered until they are well established and can handle the odd nibble.
I prefer using coffee and eggshells because it saves space in the compost bin and provides nutrients to your plants. I keep an extra pot next to my kitchen food waste bin to store the eggshells to use as and when I need them, but for the coffee grounds I try to use them as soon as possible. If they don’t dry out quick enough they will go mouldy, so I normally just chuck the grounds straight onto the soil of a different plant everyday.
Traps
What is a tastier treat than your healthy heads of lettuce? Of course, it’s beer. There’s nothing more welcoming than a beer after a day working in the garden, and it’s no different for slugs and snails. Use old food packaging like vegetable trays or a tin can and fill it halfway with the cheapest beer you can find, and make sure you put it somewhere close to your plants where it won’t get knocked over. They will be attracted to the smell of the beer, fall into the liquid and drown. Fun. Make sure you empty and refill the traps regularly and if you aren’t seeing results, try and put the traps in different locations.
If the thought of pouring your pint straight into the garden fills you with disgust or you want a cheaper, alcohol-free trap, you can use everyday bread yeast dissolved in warm water for the same effect.
I have had the most success with the trap method, however, you do have to keep checking on them and if you have dogs, it may not be the best option for you because they will find them!
Natural predators
As the old saying goes, one man’s pest is another man’s dinner… or something like that. While slugs and snails make light work of our innocent vegetables, there are plenty of predators that dine out on our slimy friends.
Frogs, hedgehogs and birds eat slugs and snails, but in residential areas populations might be low. You can try and encourage these animals by making an area of your garden into an attractive habitat for them by making a pond for frogs or a cosy hiding place out of the way for hedgehogs. If you don’t want to rely on the animals coming to you, you can try my fool proof method- I help the birds out by putting any slugs or snails I find on top of fence posts or the shed roof, maybe that’s not fair but I’m just speeding up the circle of life!
Although expensive and time consuming, ducks are definitely worth a mention if you have a bigger project on your hands. Ducks are very happy to wander around your vegetable patch slurping up slugs and snails as they go without doing damage to your plants. They also poop as they go, fertilising your veg and protecting them at the same time
It’s hard to control what wildlife comes into your garden, and while ducks are amazing, most of us don’t have the time or the space to care for them. What you can introduce to your garden are predator nematodes, tiny insects that kill slugs and snails. They are a completely natural solution; you can find them at most garden stores, and they are safe to use around children and pets.
These natural solutions can be adapted to any garden, and a combination of the different methods will help to protect your plants against most slugs and snails. The main thing to remember is to regularly check your plants for signs of damage. If you catch the problem early, you can often save your plants before too much damage is done. If you have a tried and tested method that I’ve not mentioned here that you think beats the rest, let me know in the comments below, I’m always on the lookout for new solutions!