[mashbintater]

The first thing a work colleague said to me when I told him how I'd spent my afternoon was " Get a life!"   Yet he knew exactly where I was coming from.

I removed all my upturned plastic bottles that I'd cut lengthwise and placed all around my lettuce bed, mainly as they were inhibiting chinese cabbage growth, and thus also discovered small yellow slugs underneath them.
I sprinkled some builders sand along the edge and placed a snail next to the sand. It touched the sand and tried to retreat. I have a photo but I've not mastered the downloading bit yet. I moved it a little onto the sand, it very slowly reluctantly continued forth. so I placed some nuked crumbled eggshell in front of it. Again it continued forth. A crumb of eggshell dropped onto the snail, it shot back into its shell and was unable to come back out as the eggshell had lodged it within its own shell.

I tried a fat yellow slug. It refused to cross the sand, then, this is the really weird bit. During my experiment, I continued to circle my mini plot with the sand and sprinkle a fine line of crumbled eggshell within the sand. Each time I put the snail & slug inside the ring of sand, they'd reluctantly cross it, and not head towards the veg. When I placed them on the outside of the ring of sand, they refused to cross it to get to the veg. The snail would search for a gap but the slug refused to cross.
Why go from inside the ring out, but not from outside in? Not hungry? Salt in the sand? I thought at first they preferred to slither downhill as mine is a sloping garden but the same happened whichever side I approached.  

They will cross crumbled eggshell & sand, but they don't like to.
Have I wasted my time, watch this space! Thoughts? Comments? Thanks.

[gobs]

In a way you have, could have asked, but I'm sure you had a great time.

Yes, they might not like it, but they will go through if they want to, most just will cross underground.  

[mashbintater]

Thanks gobs, I've read so many conflicting threads on this subject. I've tried beer traps with some success, even to the point of leaving dead s & s for live ones to feed on, cos they do. Porridge oats til it rains, brittle dead holly leaves, yet they climb my holly tree well enough, vaseline, catching them, dropping them in boiling water, and just generally putting them in the compost bin.  I do not want to use pellets or salt as they have a knock on ill-effect on wildlife and the food chain.
 I have to say though, I seem to be finding fewer slugs and snails now than when I began my vendetta  

[gobs]

None of these things work, but the trap and catch and kill.

[DeadlyNightshade]

I've started slug hunting about 2 weeks ago and started counting the death toll since 3 nights:

1. night was a middling outcome I thought (which puts the very first cutting session into perspective) but it turned out to be 220 halved slugs, the next night 550 and yesterday I stopped counting at 300 and only done half my garden (which is small!!)

I thought I must have reduced the slug population noticably until last night, when I came out to see my plants covered in slugs!!!!


Where are they all coming from and will it ever be successfull to reduce them???

I've put a fence of pennies at the border to the wilderness nextdoors and I think it holds them back a bit.

Last night I scattered pellets everywhere! :twisted:  :twisted: Maybe I should go and kill some more

[gobs]

if you are killing the wrong ones, you are not going to have success, the bad guys are the small ones, white, grey green and very tiny black things.

[poultrygeist]

interesting reading. This could do with a sticky (slimey?) all of its own.

Rob

[mashbintater]

Well I went out late last night to check and no surprise gobs, yes my efforts were all in vain, the temptation was too much, they just had to cross that sandy shelly perimeter   :evil:
You say white, not seen many of those; grey green, we've got huge yellowy green slugs, are they those? And yes the tiny black ones & zillions of snails, happily guzzling my chinese cabbages and attempting my dwarf peas etc  :evil: . Now they're either dead or in my compost caddy awaiting their fate
A never ending battle innit?  :x

[DeadlyNightshade]

I had monitored if the big slugs were sitting nibbling at my plants because I felt very bad to kill them all... and they do!! A brute of a brown one had a good go at my courgette and some black ones were in the rasberries. Not so sure about the tigery grey ones. I caught a massive tigery grey one last night thinking I could use her for experiments and see if she was doing any harm. But Mrs had escaped this morning out of the turned over flower pot.. how she had done it- I do not know!