[whitespirit66]

My really healthy looking Webbs Wonderfuls are being eaten alive by slugs at night. I dug a channel around them and filled it with used coffee grinds from my local cafe. This still isn't stopping them.

What can anyone advise to stop them, from being ruined?

[Trillium]

I've never heard that coffee grounds is a slug repellent other than more folklore. Slug pellets is pretty much all you can do other than grow the lettuce inside where they can't get at the plants. Now, the beer traps really do work; just have big enough containers to catch the dead slugs as they are real boozers.

[lucylike]

My boyfriends parents gave me a sack of "Slug Gone" by GrowAid http://www.growaid.co.uk/
It's slugpellets made of sheep wool. But you need a lot of it to make
it work. So far my lettuces look great so it seems to work. It event
detered some animal that dug up my neighbour's tomato plants,
mine were right next to his and fine.
It's the first year I'm using it but so far I'm happy. Has anyone elso
got experience with Slug Gone?

[noshed]

Personally I use  blue slug pellets. You only need to sprinkle them sparingly. Most stuff I have netted which keeps the birds from investigating the poisoned slugs.

[mad mark]

I have lettuce coming out of my ears and we all are sleeping well here. I just use abit of black ground cover stuff and then put black slug pellets around and then bin the slugs as they arrive to feed and die on the blue pellets. The flies are nipping holes in them but not too badly. We have a blackbird nest in the clematis and there are alot of little sparrows and the like nibbling anything they can feed on, but the slugs and snails are thwarted by the magic blue pellets...... I just make sure I put them down after every major downpour. When is summer coming?

[andreadon]

i use pine cones
not much use if you don't have fir trees around you.

[lucylike]

A friend of mine watered her plot with nematodes, I'm not sure though whether it was successfull. I'd have to check.

[Yorkie]

As far as I know, nematodes take effect against the underground slugs, not the overground ones

[peapod]

A friend of mine watered her plot with nematodes, I'm not sure though whether it was successfull. I'd have to check.

a friend of mine uses nematodes, and not even at the usual strength, she dilutes them further to make them cover a larger area.  She has noticed a big difference in her beds this year, and is assuming (along with the cold weather) that they have killed off a lot of the babies that would have grown into giants.  She still uses organic pellets for above ground

[pizzie]

I am using blue slug pellets, but the neighbour suggested either egg shells, coffee, or sand, am trying egg shells and blue slug pellets to see which works best.  Has anyone ever used egg shells or sand before? 

[richyrich7]

Give them a quick check over during the day it's not unusual for a slug to hide in a lettuce, so it probably will ignore the pellets as food is at it's feet.
Egg shells work sometimes, never tried sand tho'

[whitespirit66]

Thanks for the replies. Will the blue slug pellets attract my greedy cat? Heard of a labrador pup who died recently through eating them.

[Lady Lottie]

I'll probably regret saying this....but there seems to be a distinctly reduced number of slugs and snails in my neck of the woods this year....just gazillions of greenflies instead!

Have tried egg shells, sand and copper wire in the past - none of which worked.  Growing Success do wildlife friendly slug pellets - and they do work.

[richyrich7]

you could always put some pellets in an old plastic pop bottle, laid on it's side with some entrance holes cut into it stops pets eating them, stops them degrading into the soil too.