What few flowering plants I do have left, are constantly being battered by the wind and rain and getting swamped by unwanted visitors. I'm spending my time fighting those darned slugs and snails - So what to do?
Dealing Effectively with Slugs & Snails in Your Garden
There are many ways of ridding your garden of these small but necessary gastropod molluscs .But do you deal with them in a caring compassionate way; or do you drown them to death or simply disintegrate them with a deadly compound.
Here are a few ideas of deterring those pesky snails and slugs in a nice - and not so nice way:
The Nice Way
1. Treat them to breakfast - Yes you read that right. Apparently if you give them a copious dosing of oat/corn cereals they get all full up and can't digest anything else - then they die.
2. Make it slippy - Smear your pots and growers with a slippery compound like Vaseline or some other super-slippy substance. You can even have a little fun watching them going up and down.
3. Coffee time - If you like your proper coffee; use your leftover ground coffee and place around your best loved plants. They don't like it.
4. Copper bands - These naturally keep the blighters away - simply by taping the bands around the plant pots. A tad expensive to my mind.
5. Collect by hand - Collect them all together, one by one, and throw them over the neighbours garden. Only do this if you have particularly bad neighbourly relationship with the misery's next door. Only kidding ;-)
The Not-So-Nice Way
1. Beer solution - If you don't mind emptying out the dead bodies afterwards this works very well. Just create a well, or get suitable container with a low lip, and place in close proximity to your plants. A good waste of beer to my mind though.
2. Encourage predators - Slugs and snails are all part of the natural food chain so don't feel so bad about this one. Birds love slugs/snails - so get yourself two or three bird feeders and attract the local wildlife to do the business for you.
3. Ammonia spray - A bit drastic this one to my mind. A quick spray from a suitable container and the rogues simply disintegrate. Picture the Wicked Witch from the Wizard of Oz and you'll get the picture. However, there's still a bit of cleaning up to do afterwards.
4. Slug press - Collect them all together, one by one, and stamp all over them. If you've got kids they'll probably think this is great. However, you'll be setting a very bad example and they'll never forgive you later in life.
5. Poisoning - There are many commercial slug solutions that normally come in a bright blue pellet form; they really do the business. Be careful here and don't let the pellets onto your plant foliage - it usually ends badly for the plant as well.
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