Allotment Gardening Advice Help Chat
Growing => Grow Your Own => Topic started by: SusieB on March 27, 2015, 21:20
-
Do grass paths harbour more slugs than membrane? My veg patch is not an allotment, it's is in my garden, so grass would look a bit better.
-
Slugs seem to come out onto my grass paths after rain. I find that handy as I can walk down the path stomping them, and then there are fewer. I'd always assumed they were living in the beds, and came out onto the lawn after rain ... but if they are actually living in the grass and going into the beds for a hearty meal :( then I'll have to rethink!
-
My paths have previously had long overgrown grass, I'm pretty sure that is where they have been living. I'm hoping if I can keep the grass short, this should improve. I like the stomping idea in theory, but I'm a bit squeamish, even with slugs.
-
I can't imagine stomping on slugs -- I'd slip up on the big ones and the little ones would just compress into the grass and still survive :lol:
Picking them up after in rains, on the end of a trowel by torchlight seems an effective way of keeping the population down.
If my plot was in my garden I'd have grass paths every time :D
-
Were you planning to cover the membrane with something as it could get slippy ot torn when walking on it and the slugs would find it a nice hiding place as well.
-
just to add a little something else to consider.
i've had problem with wire worms in root crop and potatoes, most people have said that the thrive in the roots of grass. for this reason i don't do grass paths, don't know if this would effect you if you don't have a wireworm problem to start with.
-
If my plot was in my garden I'd have grass paths every time :D
I'm lucky that my plot IS in my garden, and the paths are grass! I do keep it short but I hadn't considered it might harbour slugs, or that wire worm might be a problem. My garden is full of slugs and snails, and at least they come to the surface after the rain for easy disposal - whatever your preferred method!
-
Last year, one of the other plot holders on our allotment told me he had removed all the grass on his plot and found it helped to keep down the slugs and snails.
Could you put gravel or bark chippings on the membrane to make it more attractive?
-
I'd stick with the grass for aesthetics. Weed membrane will look odd in a home garden by itself, so you also probably want to put down gravel or wood chips...which would need a border of its own to keep it contained, and then there's the maintenance of it too. I garden in several raised beds in my backyard and have considered doing the weed suppressant membrane too, but decided just to keep the grass around the beds short. That's just my take on it.
-
if you use chippings you can use it as a mulch when it's rotted down.
depends on your feelings but slabs are a minimal maintenance option, not quite as natural.
lots of people don't agree but i use quite a lot of lino covered with carpet. i'm not bothered about the chemicals they could leave as i think they're very minimal. however i will prob be looking towards chipping my paths in the future, my patch is still relatively new and i'm still not 100% sure where the paths need to go exactly.
-
heavy clay here. Some gets spilt onto the paths when getting stuff out of the beds / planting etc. My view is that with chip / gravel / etc. that would get mixed in, pick up on boots, and be a problem, so I stick to mown grass paths. Paving slabs would do me too - I could hose/pressure wash those if they got manky, but I'd need a lot of slabs!