Just a quick note as we are off to Birmingham to see The Art of the Stitch
The answer to the slug/beer problem?
Be generous.
I added more beer and the result is..well ..repulsive.
Unfortunately innocent lives may have been lost.
My dead of night garden prowling revealed that my seedlings are being eaten by teeny weeny grey slugs with voracious appetites, and a huge great SNAIL!
It doesn’t help that my cat tried his own slug repelling earlier in the day by relieving himself upon my baby plants.
I give up.
3 comments:
we have this problem too...The one who's not at all happy with them is my American farm assistant who likes to work bare foot...
With dry stone walls all around us, we have an unending abundance of snails and slugs - we are a little piece of gasteropodic heaven. As veggies we try not to deliberately kill them (though sometimes they just leap under foot! Yuk!). Coffee grounds around favourite plants are a slight impediment. Copper rings are supposed to be a dead cert but expensive. And then collectimg them at night or after showers with a plant pot and depositing them in a nearby field reduces the population somewhat - they do try to make their way back so this also means early morning visits to the path between field and garden to return them to the field again - which entertains the neighbours as large woman in nighty wanders around muttering to handsfuls of molliscs! And finally, now we tend to grow mainly plants that they don't like much - ferns rather than hostas; foxgloves rather than delphiniums etc plus protect young plants in pots with copper tape round and liberal helpings of fresh coffee grounds then plant them out when they have enough growth to cope with a bit of nibbling - herbs tend to be fairly resiliemt once they are established. Horrods Horticultral (or something like that) sell a sort of matting that you can put round plants that is supposed to deter them and is also biodegradable. Eggshells do not work whatever it says on the box! Phew!
Jo Valentine
I thought nothing could make me happy that I live in Arizona where it is too dry for many bugs to exist. Your tale of the struggle to save your seedlings from slugs and snails did it!
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