[hubballi]

I have a pot of Dahlias, well I did until now. In the last couple of weeks they seem bent on ravaging them but nothing touched them before. I have Vaseline, copper wire, salt in the Vaseline and garlic sprayed on the foliage and this morning 6 giant orange slugs were crawling all over it and all the flowers gone.

So salt doesn't stop them either.

[arugula]

I have Vaseline, copper wire, salt in the Vaseline and .....

So salt doesn't stop them either.

A direct application of salt certainly does do the trick. If you're laying it down as a barrier though, its probably dissolving and dispersing with the moisture around.

you might be better doing a slug hunt, by torch-light after about 11. If you just pop out every night you'll be amazed at what you find.

People are giving you sound advice here and you seem to be ignoring it then telling us that nothing works!

[brown thumb]

i stuck thick  double sided tape around the legs of my greenhouse staging and it worked i   have to keep checking that nothing has  stuck to it and made a bridge buts thats a small thing to do

[hubballi]

As my greenhouse is a lean to it's hard to stop the beggers. I find lots of tiny new snails inside it that have obviously got under the plastic sheets.

[sunshineband]

Any size snail will be despatched by blue pellets of death aka slug bait 

[stentman]

re the copper wire.
I use two wires about 1/2" apart round one of my raised beds. Old slug boy goes over the first one without discomfort but when he touches both at once he creates a small very weak battery and goes no further. I suppose it's a bit like a piece of silver foil on a filling it won't kill you but it's not pleasant. Seems to work reasonably well as this bed is my quick crop area lettuce, radish etc and they are relativley undamaged in the main.

[rhysdad]

Something i'm trying at the moment is vinegar. I popped to the plot the other night to find a load of brown slugs eating my small butternuts!1 I was livid and the only thing i had to hand was some bottle of basics vinegar i'd been to sainsbury's for for pickling. I poured it over the offending motormouths and they melted into a gooey horrible mess. I got a bit carried away and was sloshing the stuff all round the base of my three squash plants. Do you know that since then, i haven't found one slug near them. I mean my runners touching the ground are being stripped and they are everywhere else but NOT my squash plants......

The holy grail of slug deterrents?

[Yorkie]

You do need to be careful about sloshing too much vinegar on, as it is pure acid - which potentially will affect the pH of your soil.

[Quetzal]

we seemed to have success with used coffee grounds from Starbucks - they give em away free, and no one else seemed to be taking them from our local so i got truckloads and periodically spread them around in a broad barrier. Seemed to work.

[ferreter51]

Encourage frogs and toads into your garden.  I have made a small pond in one corner of my veg patch (it's a private garden, not an allotment) and the frogs are already in it.  I'm getting  far less slug damage now than before and I only sacrificed an area of 40 square feet or so.

[mumofstig]

Hubballi (the first poster) has a small pond, which doesn't seem to have helped much 

[stompy]

Hubballi, i'd give up if i were you, you don't seem to have any succeses growing at all.

None of the remedys that work for everyone else help you either.

I would take up golf if i had the amount of failures you have.     

[aelf]

The blue pellet of death  It's the only thing that works well for me and it is the only inorganic pesticide that I use - if I didn't use it I would loose much of my crops and all of my hair 

[Aidy]

Best thing for slugs I have found by a country mile...

Chickens 

Get some chooks, they will kill the entire slug population in no time and you get tasty eggs too.

[sunshineband]

Best thing for slugs I have found by a country mile...

Chickens 

Get some chooks, they will kill the entire slug population in no time and you get tasty eggs too.

and no veg as they will gobble them up too