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Slugs and Snails
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Help! My garden is overrun. I would need a hedgehog army to conquer the problem! But I only have 3 or 4 regular hogs that aren’t too keen on snails! Obviously not French!
I’ve taken out the red hot poker plants, as they were a slug haven. But there are still so many of them, and they just eat up the new plants I put down to create a very hedgehog friendly wildlife garden.
I know I mustn’t use slug pellets (dog and birds wouldn’t like them either… nasty things!). I read about coffee ground and would have a good source to get some. But wouldn’t the hedgies (or birds or insects) be offended by the smell in their garden?
Of course I know about beer… but the thought of floating slugs in beer is a bit much. I will do it if I have to!!!
Lots of buts… coffee ground around plants sounds ok. Any other ideas??? Thanks!
Strulch – brilliant stuff
Hello Bobs Mum, this may sound rather mad but for a couple of years now I have fed my slugs and snails … They love sliced cucumber and I also fed them with snail food… They hardly ever went near my plants and having devoured the food had slinked away by morning… I believe I attracted a hedgehog due to the amount of slugs and snails I had… I put out the giant snail food mixed into a bowl for the snails and that is when I had my suspicions… As the bowls were lick clean which I thought was odd .. Could something else be eating this food?
Then one night as I was checking the snails food, I spotted a very large hog…I was so chuffed, needless to say the numbers of slugs and snails are down now… I attracted the hedgehogs into my garden by attracting their natural food source… Win, win 🙂
Strulch will see off any slugs and last a couple of years before you need to put more down. Expensive but totally worth it
Hello, this is really interesting. I realised this year that if you want natural control species like parasitic wasps you have to let enough of their prey flourish to attract and feed them, then they can find a healthy balance. I’m going to try your method. Wonder if it would stop the local badgers scoffing all the carrots on the allotments. I had the most amazing numbers of insects in my garden this year due to letting things rewild as far as I dared before someone would object to too many ‘weeds’ – wildflowers! Ended up with a huge greenfly infestation on my sweetpeas followed by an influx of an amazing variety of aphid eating parasitic wasps of all types.
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