[ricky]

after growing potatoes for many years  i have to raise the white flag i must have the most vicious slugs in the country they have ate my potato leaves, stems and what ever small tubers were growing , i invested time and money tried different seed but to no avail , i thought id seen it all when they ate my rhubarb leaves ,i sprayed my spuds religiously for blight the slugs thought it was a dressing on the leaves and ate all the more , i grew the sarpo range but they didnt taste that nice compared to the british queen so after rotavating my plot 40 metres by 20metres by hand making drills with a shovel buying top quality seed and buying a 25kg bag of professional fertiliser every year, coming from n. ireland its usually no surrender i hear but this time from me its i surrender
 

[Nobbie]

Have you tried using nematodes to kill the slugs. You buy a sachet of Nemaslug, dilute in water and then water over the area when rain is forecast and the nematodes kill the slugs. I'm thinking of trying it next year depending on how the potatoes do this year.

[Christine]

Nematodes don't work on clay soils they say so that may not be a cure but otherwise worth a go.

[ricky]

They say napalm might be worth a try

[mumofstig]

Slug resistant potatoes

Slug-resistant cultivars: ‘Charlotte’, ‘Estima’, ‘Golden Wonder’, ‘Kestrel’, ‘Pentland Dell’, ‘Pentland Ivory’, ‘Pentland Squire’, ‘Stemster’, ‘Sante’ and ‘Wilja’

https://www.rhs.org.uk/advice/profile?PID=716

they're the varieties I tend to grow and some of us put slug pellets in the planting holes, and again when we earth them up.

[ricky]

i got a farmer to come up and look at my spuds now he says i have eelworm and it could take 40 years to get it out of the ground , is their such thing as eelworm resistant potatoes im at a loss

[mumofstig]

Eelworm eat the roots not the tubers, according to this
http://www.gardenfocused.co.uk/fruitarticles/pest-disease/potato-eelworm.php

They show some eelworm resistant potatoes and with a four year rotation, you can clear the plot - a bit at a time.

Could you have wireworm rather than Eelworm, cos wireworm do make holes
http://chat.allotment-garden.org/index.php?topic=115890.msg1338569#msg1338569

[JayG]

Rocket is not the tastiest variety, but have been the best at growing through the eelworm infestation I have in my soil, although there are two types of eelworm (PCN) and there are few varieties that have high resistance to both.

Holes in spuds are not caused by eelworm - above ground the evidence is that the top growth starts well but becomes stunted and dies back early, so the crop is much reduced, and when lifted you can see the white, yellow, or brown egg cysts attached to the roots, and sometimes to the tubers too. The cysts are very small, smaller than a pin head, but can be very numerous and therefore quite easy to spot.

As Mum says, rotation is essential to keep it to manageable levels.