A natural way to control slugs and snails

A baby snail exploring the flower stalks of my Wild Garlic plants.

If you've got a garden, you've got slugs and snails.  Fact.  The little blighters lurk everywhere - behind walls, around pots and under planks of wood. I've even found one behind a pot on a top floor balcony! But they're also an essential part of the eco-system that our gardens need to succeed ... but possibly not in such large numbers.

Slugs come in all shapes and sizes ... and names.  A quick google search gives me banana slugs, ghost slugs, leopard slugs, pancake slugs, Spanish slugs, brown field slugs and a rainbow of slug colours - black, yellow, red, ash-grey and pink. And there's also a range of rather cute sea slugs.

They're hermaphrodes so both sexes can lay hundreds of eggs several times a year after mating. Once hatched, tiny slugs become adults within a year and then start the cycle again.

They'll munch on dead leaves, sick plants and, in the case of leopard slugs, they'll also eat each other.  And when that food source runs out, they'll head straight for your newly planted lettuces and legumes. Pity the poor gardener who persists in trying to grow hostas, lupins and delphiniums!  (There is a way round that.)

Putting aside their natural aptitude for destruction, slugs are also an important part of the garden eco-system, providing a food source for birds, foxes, beetles - and, if you're lucky, hedgehogs, frogs and ducks. So the methods I've tried and tested in my veg patch and other gardens are more about control than total annihilation.

When I wrote about natural slug deterrents in 2014, I hadn't yet tried wool pellets or Strulch. But both worked for me in subsequent years keeping slugs and snails away from beans and strawberries.  

This year I'm going to try Grazers, a natural spray recommended by garden designer Jo Thompson.  I can't report on its effectiveness yet as we haven't had much wet weather so far. (Ha! I wrote that yesterday, today it's raining.)

And I've not tried drowning slugs in pots of beer (I prefer to drink it myself) but heard from a neighbour that he'd had some success with a yeast based concoction but was unable to provide me with a recipe. It seems that it's the yeast that gets the slugs attention.

But, happy days, I've since found the magic potion online and have stored up the recipe for the next bout of expected precipitation. (Recipe at bottom of this post or watch here.)

Two more ways of protecting your veg plants; try surrounding them with plants that slugs dislike. Or, secondly, plant into pots and smear a good slick of grease such as a Vaseline around the rim - slugs will arch over copper tape but sticky grease deters them.  It certainly worked with a client's delphiniums last year!

A few plants that slugs don't like are strong smelling plants like nepeta, sage, thyme, lavender and the hairier plants like borage, foxgloves, salvia, astrantia.  I've noticed they also leave calendula alone.  All of these are also good for attracting pollinators. 

But, of course, the best deterrent is to go out during the evening with a torch and bucket of warm salty water; you'll find many molluscs feasting on your plants. Pick them off, drop them into the bucket; the salty water will kill them. Cruel but effective. But put the bodies into the compost, I'm not sure that birds would benefit from eating salty snacks. 

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A recipe to capture slugs

• Approximately one cup of lukewarm water (not hot)
• 2 Tablespoons of plain flour
• 1 Tablespoon of sugar (fine sugar like caster sugar will dissolve faster)
• 1 teaspoon of dried yeast
• A jar to mix it all in.

Add all the dry ingredients in the jar, add the warm water bit by bit stirring as you go to avoid clumps. 

Make this mixture an hour before using. The mix will be active when you see foam on the top.

Pour into tubs or containers sunk partly into the soil, away from your precious plants. Check on the tubs in the morning and expect to find several slugs have found their way there. 

A few pointers on making slug traps from recycled pots can be read here.

Worth a try, eh? 

Scents and sensibility

(Now there's a title that's been trotted out more than once in blogland, I'll wager.)

(I don't need to tell you this is Honeysuckle, do I?)

In the winter months, while waiting for the garden to wake up, there's something really special about the scent of flowers on the breeze or in the still of an evening. It's there to attract pollinators and is particularly helpful to bumblebees who start to wake up in January and need to stock up their food reserves.

I've been thinking about scent in the garden since being asked to advise on a bare patch of earth destined to become a front garden. The client is a florist who wants her garden to be welcoming and uplifting whether viewed from the street or indoors. So my recommendations will encompass scent, colour, movement and seasonal interest.  I then read that Sue, author of Backlane Notebook blog, and Louise 'Wellywoman' Curley were proposing a monthly round up post of the scent in our gardens. Open to all, join in! Wellywoman's first post is here.

I headed outside to see what was scenting the air locally.  There are two stands of Viburnum x bodnantense 'Dawn' in the gardens here - a shrub well-known for its subtle scent and pretty flower clusters in the middle of winter. I say "subtle" but at times I've been able to get a whiff from a good five paces away.

Viburnum x bodnantense 'Dawn'

There's also some ancient honeysuckle snaking through an overgrown Hebe - I think it's Japanese honeysuckle which is supposed to flower in summer but I found a few blossoms among the evergreen leaves and quickly snipped those for a vase indoors. They're wilting after five days but even now I can catch a whiff as I walk past.

But an unusual winter niff, at least from these gardens, is from Petasites fragrans.  Popularly known as Winter Heliotrope and related to Sweet Coltsfoot and Butterburr, it's more commonly found on roadsides and woodland verges. It's perennial and non-native, being introduced to the UK as a garden plant back in 1806 when George III was still our monarch. By 1835, it had escaped from gardens into the wild.  I only found out what it was last year thanks to an article in the RHS magazine on scented winter flowers.

The flower spikes are about ten inches high and only really look good for a few days but get up close, or pick a few for a small vase, and their sweet scent is revealed.  I've read that they smell like vanilla or honey.  As a keen baker, I have to disagree - to me, they smell sweet, like baby talc.  If the colour soft pink had a smell, this would be it.

But that's it - its one and only season of interest. In these gardens, the flower spikes start to appear in late December and the flowers - small tubular clusters - show up in early January.  The leaves are soft, bright green and shaped like lily pads but even those will be blackened or mottled by a sharp frost. The plant spreads by underground rhizomatous roots and there's my problem.  It's quietly invasive and hard to get rid of except with some determination and a lot of digging.

It dominates one of the raised borders here and is earmarked to go. So far it's been left alone because it provides dense ground cover until I'm ready to use the space but I've noticed that it's spread along under the Hebe where it usefully grows in shade. I suspect it's providing cover for a host of over wintering bugs and bumbles so I'll relocate some when (or if) I dig it up.  It would make a good alternative to ivy in a lightly shaded garden, I think, but it grows to the detriment of other plants nearby.

I think I mentioned that it spreads easily …  

I have no idea why it's growing in the gardens here - I can't imagine anyone deliberately choosing to plant it and I'm fairly certain you can't buy it - but it does provide a rich source of early nectar for bumblebees.  Because bumbles are warm-blooded they can fly in cooler winter temperatures (unlike the honeybee) so an early source of food for them is vital - especially if you want your veg pollinated in due course. They can fly up to six miles from the nest site so it's in the gardener's best interest to ensure they stick around by providing a good source of nectar.  In her book 'The Natural Gardener', Val Bourne says that they have a preference for tubular flowers - foxgloves, aconitums and nepetas being their favourites.  It seems that Petasites might be more friend than foe.

PS. Don't think my search for winter scent stopped at home; next up, Daphne bholua and the winter walk at Wisley.