I have got shoots coming where I planted my lettuce yay!!! I hope this is a sign of a good crop!

The slug-online forum watch this space you know ;)

lol, they are in post surrounded by a ring of salt muauauauah! Just let em try it :suspect:

Baileys mum

You've got to be careful adding salt to the soil. It will wash in and change the salinity of the soil. It takes a long long time to get it back to conditions where plants will grow in it. You could try using bran or woodash (making sure the wood wasn't painted or otherwise contaminated). You'll have to keep replacing the bran/ash as rain will wash it in but at least it won't harm the soil. Also try slug traps etc. There must be another thread discussing organic slug/snail prevention. Some people has devised some ingeneous methods...

Hi i dont know if this is true but i read somewhere that slugs and snails prefer rotting leaves and that if you have areas of rotting leaves in your garden it deters them from your growing veg.

I've spread a sheet of cardboard on my allotment for them to take refuge under.

And, if they get hungry, I've sprinkled slug pellets under it too :twisted: how thoughtfull am I?

Aren't you worried about using slug pellets? - from the point of view of killing birds and poisoning your soil with metaldehyde. The companies claim that slug pellets containing metaldehyde are bird friendly but independent (peer-reviewed) research has shown this not to be the case. Or do you mean the organic slug pellets? These are slightly less effective than the blue ones but at least you don't have to worry about bird life.

We used blue slug pellets until two years ago but always netted the areas to stop birds getting in and then picked up all the dead slugs. Now we don't use them it's so much easier and if you have a really good go at slug hunting just as the eggs are hatching you can make life really easy for yourself. Even better try to find and squish the eggs before they hatch. They're about 4-5 mm across. They hatch in spring - whenever that is now.

I think the birds need all our help - especially as they are going to really suffer trying to adapt to climate change and its consequences for ecosystems.

Metaldehyde does indeed bother me regarding secondary ingestion by the birdies.

I'm hoping the slugs remain under this sheet of card (and it's quite big) & rot alongside their last meal.

It's an area at one end I'm not likely to use for growing for quite some time so it will remain covered to deter germination of weed seeds.

At the other end are brambles & raspberry canes that I'm leaving (retraining) to share with the birds :thumbsup:

They are in 55ltr pots, the salt was a joke :D