Slugs and Snails ... and keeping plants safe from them!

Snails and slugs ... a gardeners enemy!

They attack many kinds of plants, especially young plants and the soft, succulent growth of herbaceous perennials and vegetables. Slugs provide a useful function by eating dead plant tissue and they are more prevalent on soils with high organic matter where manure and compost have been applied. They are more active in wet years.

Don't the thoughts of them slimming their way over your plants make your skin crawl! Personally, I wouldn't mind if they had an odd nibble, but they never seem content unless causing havoc and inviting all their relations and friends over for a good feed until they have damaged the plant. 

I think the term snails pace does not do justice to the speed at which they can demolish a young plant after a lovely rain shower!

There are many ways of dealing with them ... here is a link to how to deal with them organically. With some of the ingredients of slug pellets being banned shortly, we must look to new methods and or course for our environment. 

New Method - using recycled glass

I tried a new method on a few plants this year. I was lucky enough to be given a bag of crushed glass ( the type they use mixed with sand for sand blasting) from my friend Donal. See below for some before and after pictures of how successful it was. It would have been more successful if my cat didn't like digging in the bark around the beds! This trial was done over approx 4 weeks. 

Crushed glass:

The glass with a stanley blade to show size

The glass is very fine - there are different sizes you can order. I didn't need any special protection and didn't get cut handling it without gloves. See below for contact details if interested in trying it.

The before and after photos:

Lemon Thyme ( 2 plants)

Before:

Note - more glass was applied after this photo, but I didn't take a more up to date photo

After:

As you can see there is a huge difference in the improvement. It would have been even better, but I didn't notice for the first week that there was a slug hiding within the barrier. Lesson learnt for future to check the inner circle for these pests! 

Lupin:

For some reason the slugs/snails were only attacking one of the plants - think they were keeping the other plant for the following week. Here you can see how deep the glass was applied - and this was the depth for the others, I just forgot to take the photos again! 

Before:

Including the lupin that was untouched. 

A close up of the slug/snail damage.

After:

Much more healthy leaves

Even a beautiful Lupin flower!

Summer bedding

Before:

After:

After 4 weeks - most of the glass still intact in this bed

Even some beautiful flowers off plants I had given up for dead which they would have been without the glass protecting them. Here you can see the cat wasn't as active at this bed! 

Result:

The trial was a huge success as you can see from the above pictures. I found in cat busy areas, I would need to reapply about every 2 weeks, but in the less cat traveled areas, I would only need to apply or touch up every 4 weeks. I believe that if I wasn't using bark for ground cover, this could even be elongated - perhaps even yearly!!! 

The product is pet friendly as it didn't bother my cat around those areas! 

Details of Supplier ( for Ireland):

Donal Whelan 086 - 849 8501

Delivery can be arranged. 

Slug trap - make your own

There are many websites dedicated to making your own slug trap. The hardest part for us was finding beer out of date to use - thankfully found a few cans of an unpopular beer lurking at the back of the press that someone had brought to a party over a year ago.

I found this guide very useful and basic - a couple of photos at the end of what mine looked like. There is a lot of wet weather forecast in Ireland this week - so slugs and snails will be out in abundance.

HOW TO MAKE YOUR OWN SLUG TRAP
  

YOU WILL NEED:

• Large yogurt container with lid – emptied and cleaned

• Inexpensive beer or non-alcoholic beer

WHAT TO DO:

1. Cut two holes (slug entrances) in the upper half of a large yogurt container.

2. Pour about two inches of beer into the container.

3. Dig a hole near your garden that is as wide as the container. Make the hole deep enough that the slug entrances will be at ground level.

4. Place the yogurt container into the ground so that the entrances to the container are flush with the ground.

5. Put the lid on the yogurt container (so dogs and raccoons don’t get into it!).

6. Check the trap after a couple of days. Throw away or compost the dead slug bodies.

7.After about two days the trap doesn’t “smell” and won’t attract slugs.

Add more bait and try again.

HOW DOES IT WORK?

Slugs and snails are attracted to the smell of the beer. They crawl to the trap, reach in and try to drink, fall in and are drowned.
http://www.lhwmp.org/home/Educators/documents/SY_SlugTrap.pdf



This is what I used - an old milk plastic bottle and a large yoghurt container. 

Yoghurt container in place and just filled with some lovely out of date beer

Digging it in

In place - as you can see the level of the soil is level with the opening. The shots are a bit poor as I was burying them in the corners where the snails and slugs like to reside in the raised bed.