Take a look around your nooks and cranny’s

They are hiding ,they are waiting for a little warm damp weather and they will be all over our plants.
So lookout......

 

Sssssssssnails
Early snail hunts helps control numbers here

 

Slugs and snails were the bane of my garden last year. Eventually I went insane and would go out on nightly round ups. Would collect 100-150 each night and chuck them in the green bin with bricks on top of the lid because those scumbags fit through anything. Eventually I used nematodes for the slugs and within a fortnight the population quartered. We have also had all our crumbly old brickwork replaced which will help too. Thanks for the warning, I'm going to start patrols before we get into nematode season.

 

Nematodes do work very well for slugs (not sure they are effective on snails) Irmemac ...

 

Groan................ wish we had a groan emoji. Slugs are the bane of my life in summer; clay soil and a wet summer are the worst. I must confess to going out with the salt pot of an evening. I'm sure there are people who will criticise this practice but it's the best solution I've found.

 

@Verdun you are right. Didn't dent the snail numbers for me at all, and the nematodes were only designed for slugs. I'm not a big fan of snails, but hate slugs with a passion. Sadly too much of a wuss to do like @Redwing with salt, although my dad used to. I did make slug pubs last summer too. Could drown dozens in Heineken, but the little blighters wouldn't go near Sainsbury's basic bitter at 40p a can....

 

Gardens with sunken pots of slug traps look awful, smell bad and are prob unhygienic. Often people who do that go overboard too.
A regular physical snail and slug hunt, salt solution and torch, is an effective control albeit an unpleasant task.
A pond to attract frogs etc and plants to attract birds also controls numbers.
So, a combination of things is needed I think

 

They are the one creature that really disgusts me. But I wouldn't be able to make slug pubs...then I would have to deal with them.Yuk, I don't think I could do it. Salt is easier.

I find that birds do not really deal with the ones above a certain size. I see robins eating the little pink ones but the really big gross one get left alone to proliferate. I have recently made a pond. It remains to be seen if the toad population increases and the slug population decreases. Hope so.

 

Only bird I've ever seen trying to eat a slug is a crow, and even then it spent ages trying to wipe the slime off before eating it.
Personally, although I have loads of frogs, never seen any eat slugs.

Have found lots of snail shells with neat holes in them, I think that is mice.

I tend to use the so called organic slug pellets, how environmentally friendly they are might be questionable, but they do tend to work.

Slug pellets containing metaldehyde are probably the most effective method I have found, but not considered a good idea these days.
These can work if placed undercover and in confined places slugs and snails are likely to hide.

 

When i first saw this thread headline i thought i was about to click onto some sort of NHS self examination health initiative

 

@WeeTam

@Redwing You're right, slug pubs are revolting. After a week I was too disgusted to keep going. Those fat, bloated corpses were stomach churning!

 

The problem with pellets is that the slug crawls around and can die in the open, poisoning beneficial creatures like toads, frogs, hedgehogs, blackbirds.. even pets who knows.

 

Yep, I agree, but I'm convinced it is a fallacy that there are all these animals out there queueing up to eat slugs and snails.
In my experience, they just DONT.