Gardening expert details natural ways to deal with slugs
Slugs and snails can cause widespread damage to garden plants and flowers. They can often be seen eating holes in leaves, stems and even tubers and bulbs. The pests can cause particular damage to seedlings and new plants in the spring months. Holes in these young plants can eventually kill them.
Unfortunately, slugs are active throughout the year which means learning how to control the pests is key.
With this in mind, horticulturalist Adam Pasco has shared different ways to control pests “naturally without resorting to harmful chemicals” in a video for B&Q.
Adam said slugs and snails love tender new shoots. If they eat them, gardeners won’t get any plants at all.
The expert recommended using barrier products like grit or sharp sand to put around the plant.
Simply sprinkle this around the plants early in the season, this will “stop the slugs and snails crawling over the soil surface and reaching the plants to protect them from attack”.
Alternatively, gardeners can use plastic bottles like old milk bottles or fizzy drinks bottles.
Snip the bottom of the carton off and pop them over the young plants and seedlings.
This hack will also keep birds away and will create a mini cloche to help the plants grow more quickly while keeping pests at bay.
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Adam’s other suggestion was to cut up old compost bags.
Simply cut them open, put them on the soil surface and hold them down with some stones to stop them from blowing away.
In the morning, peel back the compost bags and look underneath and there should be a number of slugs trapped.
To kill them, Adam suggested putting them into a “jam jar filled with salty water”.
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In beds, borders and around vegetable plots, gardeners can dig a hole, sink a jam jar or plastic yoghurt pot into the ground so the rim of the pot is level with the soil surface and fill them with beer.
Known as “beer traps”, slugs are attracted to the smell, and will crawl along and fall into the drink, drowning them.
Once the container has some slugs in there, throw the container and the dead slugs away.
It’s important to check the beer traps regularly to see if beetles or other insects have fallen in there.
If so, pick them out and pop them back into the garden.
Copper rings ca also be used to deter slugs. These can be bought from garden centres or online and fixed to pots and containers.
The ions in the copper emit an electrical charge which gives slugs a non-lethal shock when they move over it.
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