Garden Centre

Wednesday, August 22, 2007

Slugs

Guess what – we have a plague. The almost continuous rain, generally warm but not hot temperatures, and a shortage of sun have provided perfect conditions for slugs. Gardens and crops are said to be facing devastation. Much now depends on weather conditions in the next few months, according to Dr Bill Lankford, who is involved in a slug-watch programme for Bayer CropScience.

Why has it happened? Well a dry, hot period over the summer kills off large numbers of slugs – and really it only takes a fortnight of heat and relative dryness to reduce slug numbers faster than they increase, but this year has produced slug-breeding rather than slug-killing conditions and this means 50% more slugs are around than in previous years Some areas have been particularly badly hit - in parts of Gloucestershire there are 100 slugs per square foot. Yuck is the word that comes to mind!

What also makes an increase in numbers such a concern is the fact they eat twice their body weight every day. High numbers of slugs have the potential to destroy entire fields of crops. The current slug boom has already resulted in farmers' costs rising and this could soon be passed on to us, in increased vegetable costs.

So what can we do? Not a lot, in all honesty, unless we want to use slug pellets which are a bad idea for both environmental reasons and because you can’t eliminate slugs – they just move in from next door. Try some of these though …

Slugs don't like tough leaves, they like tender things to nibble on, like inner leaves and strawberries, and they are also fond of leaves that are beginning to wilt, so if you do some weeding, leave the weeds around for a few days as the slugs will eat those first.

Although it is possible that this will encourage more slugs into your garden, if you have a healthy population of other creatures that eat slugs, you will be providing them with food, and there will be a balance. Toads are ideal, but hard to convince to move in, frogs arrive more easily if you have a pond, and putting down a pile of logs (keep your large prunings in a heap in an overlooked corner) will encourage the two other big slug-feasters: birds and ground beetles. Slow worms love slugs, but they are rare creatures these days, sadly.

Because slugs have to produce mucus (slime) to move, they prefer not to move over anything dry, dusty, or scratchy. They need to produce so much slime to travel over gravel, sand, ash, or lime that they can exhaust themselves in dry weather (assuming we ever get any) and die. So to protect really beloved plants, put down a sand circle or ash circle around the plant and renew regularly. They also hate copper, so wrapping copper wire around pots can protect really susceptible plants.

Labels: garden pests, garden research, gardens in the news, slugs and snails

The All Seasons Gardener at 8:54 AM

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