Thanks for thinking of us rouge. It's interesting that gastropods seems to like bread dough even more than beer.

But, sadly, I fear, this is not a practical solution for many reasons.

Attracting is not what we need. They're already attracted by our gardens. If we attract we need the attractant to be fatal. Metaldehyde is illegal so that's a non starter.

Visiting the traps frequently is not possible for me personally because the main problem is not in my home garden but on my allotment some distance away.

Making fresh bread dough every week and taking it to the plot for the rest of my life is also not going to happen.

Putting the dough away from boundaries is not possible because our allotments are so close together. Snails happily travel across many plots in a nights feasting.

I have tried beer traps (I have a proper lidded trap, not just a tuna can) and the creatures do fall in and drown. But once there are a few corpses no other gastropod will come to the trap. So the beer needs to be constantly renewed which is a waste of beer imo. Also the traps stink once there are bodies in them.

Another thing. The reason slugs and snails are the number one problem for British gardeners is that we have RAIN. Dough in the open garden would wash away in no time.

In my ornamental home garden I don't even try to stop them. We coexist. I just grow stuff they're less likely to eat. I also use techniques to discourage them such as growing my only two hostas in tall pots and not pruning clematis to less than three feet. They still get eaten but it's slightly less disastrous.

On the allotment I don't direct sow much but use decent sized transplants started at home. I also use iron sulphate pellets and hunt and destroy sessions.

Bread dough might work in a small scale experiment but I don't consider it practical in a real garden.

Hedgehogs?

I wish. I haven't seen one for years. We managed to kill most of them off with metaldehyde slug bait and habitat destruction. Same with our song thrushes which love to eat snails. I rarely see one these days.

The reason slugs and snails are the number one problem for British gardeners is that we have RAIN.

That's what I would have thought as well @floral_uk z.8/9 SW UK but I thought I recall you and or @rosaprimula UK (Cambridge) Z8/9 saying that one of you at least resides in a 'dry' area of the UK. And hasn't the last few years been quite dry for England? If so did you notice a significant decrease in slug and snail activity?

Rosa does. Not me, I'm in the wet south west. There's no decrease in snails. If anything there are more than ever. Winters are getting so mild they're breeding all year round. Where I am the 30 year average rainfall has gone up 150% since 1990. Last spring was the second wettest since 1853.

Wow, floral, those are some surprising numbers on the rainfall! And so sad that we have killed off other creatures with our chemicals and "progress".

I only have slug issues with my dahlias, for othe most part, so I can't complain too much. I have seen some new and interesting slugs this year, one of which was huge and it was blackish gray and spotted. Not the small brownish-orange of the usual suspects.

:)

Dee

Ha ha dry area!! We had 150% of the normal rainfall and a massive influx of molluscs - yep, even dry east anglia has been battered - on my allotment, all is despair - most people have had nearly all their crops eaten - I am on my 4th attempt at french beans, still have a greenhouse filled with leeks, squash, lettuce cos I cannot face putting them in the ground to simply be eaten. O, and blight is now an issue. If I could get there twice a day, maybe, but a bike ride away means I never manage to do the regular patrols which are the only thing keeping my garden going...although to be fair, I grow many flowers which are not that badly affected. It's mostly vegetables being munched.

I only grew a load of veg this year because of being a bit competitive with my daughter. It';s back to flowers only, next year. Looks like my plans for redoing a part of the allotment are scuppered though as I am going to have to use my entire garden budget on a second-hand PC. sigh.

The UK. native glowworm larvae prey on slugs and snails just like our native firefly larvae. Does the UK have a healthy population of the Glowworm Beetles? https://www.woodlandtrust.org.uk/trees-woods-and-wildlife/animals/beetles/glow-worm/#:~:text=Glow%20worms%20do%20all%20their,don%27t%20even%20have%20mouthparts.

Sadly, I have never seen a glow worm in Britain in my entire life.

Do the 1:10 vinegar or ammonia drenches work for you guys? I have been doing this now for some years, early spring and early autumn. I do it to protect my hostas. Unfortunately it does nothing for cutworms. That’s another matter. I would like to know the secret to killing those pests.

debra

No. Vinegar is a herbicide so is impractical in a densely planted garden. And anything watered on the soil is dissolved instantly by the rain. It might work if directly sprayed on the beasts but if I can actually see them why go to the extra trouble of mixing a potion and spraying it? I can simply squash them there and then.

This is the outcome of a couple of minutes search around my garden. Shortly afterwards they met the sole of my boot. Much quicker than footling about with a spray.

Pictures "seal the deal"! Thank you.

Do you not have a product like Sluggo? It's readily available here, does not contain metaldehyde, and is very effective. My vegetables would be eaten up with snails, what with the rain and my beds heavily mulched with hay, but Sluggo works!

Of course we have such products. Metaldehyde is banned but iron sulphate pellets work just as well. I use pellets round newly planted vegetables but I don't bother in the ornamental garden. They need frequent reapplication due to dissolving in the rain. I no longer try to direct sow any veg. Rows of seedlings disappear in a single night. As I said above we learn to coexist.

See, this forum is so fascinating....and entertaining as well. [g] The idea of feeding bread dough to snails...lol. And then Floral's very logical response to how it was not practical to do. Her explanation was also very vivid. I found myself visualizing her getting up at 5a to make the daily bread dough for the snails....lol. Too funny! Imagine how turned around that would be, the gardener preparing meals for the snails...lol. Talk about adding insult to injury!

I am going to have to use my entire garden budget on a second-hand PC. sigh

"We" thank you in advance :).

Last spring was the second wettest since 1853

My partner and I always enjoy watching Wimbledon this time of year and with this thread on my brain, coupled with all the rain the tournament is experiencing, I have been half expecting to see a phalanx of slugs/snails 'march' across centre court. I continue to keep my eyes peeled ;).

I wouldn't be surprised .... h

"... it was recently announced that a new species of snail, Travunijana djokovici, has been named after the world No 1." https://www.eurosport.com/tennis/i-am-honoured-novak-djokovic-has-new-species-of-snail-named-after-him-at-serbia-open_sto8287426/story.shtml

So I was thumbing through the "latest" (May 20204) GARDENS ILLUSTRATED magazine (arrived by snail mail ; just yesterday) from across the 'pond' and low and behold I came across this "hot off the presses article titled

CAN GARDENERS MAKE FRIENDS WITH SLUGS AND SNAILS?

Slugs and snails have historically been maligned as the gardener's arch nemeses - munching seedlings, decimating crops and ruining flowers. But is this reputation wholly deserved? The RHS and The Wildlife Trusts don't think so, and have recently launched the campaign Making Friends with Molluscs in an attempt to give slugs and snails a bit of a break from the hate. But it is likely to take some time for gardeners to adjust to the idea that they need to live in harmony with molluscs. In a recent poll by Gardens Illustrated, between 68 and 78 per cent of respondents still saw them as garden pests.

Jon Ablett is senior curator of molluscs at the Natural History Museum and thinks they're misunderstood.

"Molluscs are an amazingly diverse group of animals," he says. "They're found all over the world and in almost every habitat. While gardeners may think that slugs and snails exist purely to eat their plants, they should remember that they are part of our complex ecological community, providing food for birds, insects, amphibians and small mammals as well as helping to process the soil and increase the cycling of nutrients. Not all species of slug and snail feed on living vegetation, with some preferentially eating decaying plant and animal matter and fungi or even other slug and snail species."

No matter how much destruction they may cause to your hostas, slugs and snails are a vital part of our ecosystems and, perhaps they deserve some respect.

I'm thinking that maybe @floral_uk z.8/9 SW UK and @rosaprimula UK (Cambridge) Z8/9 might consider taking part in this RHS supported campaign "Making Friends with Molluscs" :).

Well.... I don't have a snail issue, but I've read enough posts here to see what destruction they can do in a garden. I am flummoxed to how anyone can say they are NOT a garden pest. And did the article explain HOW you make friends with them and protect your garden at the same time? And one last thought. When floral talks about how many she has in her garden, they seem to reproduce amazingly well, like they could take over the world...lol.

I'm pretty much already with the programme in that I only wage desultory war in the ornamental garden and only protect young plants in the vegetable garden.

Hi all,

I had a serious slug problem here in Kansas and solved it almost instantly with the product "Sluggo." It is Iron sulfate-based but formulated with other compounds to keep it from instantly dissolving in dew or rain and make it irresistible to slugs. Iron sulfate is actually beneficial to plants in the soil, in that both Iron and Sulfur are elements that plants need. Sluggo eliminated my slugs virtually overnight.

ZM (not associated with the product Sluggo)

I don't believe our problem will ever be 'solved'. As I said above I do use iron sulphate pellets around young vegetable plants. And, since they are an essential part of the ecosystem, we don't want to completely eliminate them.

" We have reached a bit of a tipping point, as useful beasties such as thrush, frogs, hedgehogs have become scarce " ... Rosa, I had wished to believe your habitat is being better preserved than here, but seems nature is on a broad scale very slippery slope. Seriously, I haven't seen a toad in about fifteen years, frog species have crashed all round, garter snakes had been plenty lots up until just a few years ago, the HEAT drastically reduced their food supply and seems most have perished. Before, when I'd go for a walk in the wilds that surround this place, the areas were always hopping with bugs and creatures, not so much at all of recent years.

Slugs here are smaller to about 1.5 inches with considerable damage done when plenty exist, I can't bring myself to eat lettuce if it's been slimed, simply can't wash that gluey stuff off! Been doing some evening rounds and picked off about ten immature slugs on just one small dahlia, I have slug bait on hand, though with this current heat and dry, the numbers of the buggers do not warrant application, well other than around that one dahlia, lol.

Seriously, I haven't seen a toad in about fifteen years, frog species have crashed all round, garter snakes had been plenty lots up until just a few years ago,

You beat me to the punch @FrozeBudd_z3/4. When I was growing up I remember finding it hard to sleep some days in the summer with the cacophony of calls from the teeming amphibia in the area. Garter snakes could be seen sunning themselves all around. It is rare now if I ever see a frog/toad and of course related to this decline is the decline in the population of snakes. I can count on one hand the # of snakes I have seen in the past 20 years even though I have lived next to a woodlot.

I wonder - would it help at all to try growing some veggies in those raised planters? I'm doing one for the first time this year to escape the rabbits. I wonder if the slugs and snails can climb up into a raised planter? Or would there be a reasonably easy way to keep them out of them?

I haven't seen toads, turtles or snakes in 35 years. We used to see toads and turtles when there was a little swampy area about 10 blocks away but they filled that in and developed a sub division, and that was the end of that. *sigh*

Raised planters are just not practical on the allotment. Firstly I am not prepared to pay for them or the soil to fill them nor to visit them daily to water. I get plenty of produce despite the snails. And they can certainly climb.

This one was on the outside of the bathroom window ... on the third floor.

Rouge and Prairiemoon, I'm glad to have grown up when wildlife "still" existed. The big warty toads that would wedge themselves in the cool of the crack between the foundation wall and cement pad, they were not much afraid and could pet them, but I always felt the need to give my hands a good washing that those warts not grow on me, lol. The fireflies, the minnows in the stream, the ducks nesting along. The hawks and owls, one year so very numerous that one or the other was perched on pretty well each and every power pole! These days, I see the occasional hawk, though might hear the hoot of an owl every few years. I recall the glorious Indian paintbrushes along the sides of the road growing in every imaginable shade of color other than blue, also the spectacular orange red wood lilies that I now haven't seen in decades, if any now do exist, they're food for the damned red lily beetles!

FrozeBudd, You're fortunate to have lived in an area where that kind of wildlife and undisturbed land was around you. I grew up in the city for the most part, but had opportunity to visit Maine in the summers and other suburban areas. I can remember driving along back roads at night in the summer with the windows down and there was this distinct fragrance of just earth and green growing plants that is just not there any more. And in some less developed areas you could smell wild honeysuckle on the breeze. We'd have possum in the garage and even in the suburbs raccoons in the rubbish. I haven't seen either of those in probably 10 years. I do see less hawks and I don't think I've seen an owl in the wild in my life. Fireflies are a very distant memory of trips to Maine when I was a kid. But we do have plenty of rabbits [g] and turkeys and coyotes, which I'm told by neighbors were absent this year for the first time. No one knows what happened to them.

I agree, I feel very fortunate to have lived before the world lost so much of the natural world.

Floral, I can see your situation is different than mine and omgosh....I imagine you get used to seeing these snails etc., but in the city and the suburb here in New England, I don't think I've ever seen a snail. Plenty of gardeners have slugs and I've even seen a few small ones in my garden, but I guess they are just not a big part of our ecology here. I would not enjoy seeing those climbing up the windows....lol.

I have plants in pots, one on the top of my front steps. Snails even climb up to that pot!

This one was on the outside of the bathroom window ... on the third floor.

That is a scary, scary picture @floral_uk z.8/9 SW UK.

I had a single hosta, growing in a tall terracotta chimneypot. Nothing deterred snails.including a moat. Snails simply climbed up an adjoining pergola and abseiled down a clematis to drop on the hosta from above. True, it was unable to escape back down the chimney pot, but not until it had eaten enough holes in the hosta to resemble a colander. I am almost admiring regarding the purpose and tenacity of our mollusc apocalypse.

Having all sorts of issues with various email accounts and forgotten passwords, so posting on dodgy chromebook. I loathe tech stuff.

Been there, done that.

Note the crushed eggshells. Another 'remedy' sometimes suggested. As you can see, they are totally useless.

Allotment harvest. Beans and snails. The snails were well up the

bean poles but they don't much like the beans. They will eat young plants but as the leaves toughen up they slither off to find something more tender.

One summer, one summer only, I had leopard slugs. Never saw any more, and even found them in my basement. They were so big i flushed them down the toilet!

Frozebud, the lilies dissapearing could be the work of deer. They love lilies, and without natural predators or culling, they eat many rare species in the lily family into a threatened listing. The Scarlet Lily Beetles are now in Illinois, but I haven't seen any yet. There's also a weevil that decapitates the flowers of Asteraceae species. I found my giant annual sunflower with it's enormous head dangling, and many of my Cup Plant flowers were beheaded by them last year. Do the slugs that fall in the beer trap get drunk and drown, or do they just come to and slither away with a nasty hangover?

Lilies are one of the plants I can grow in my snail sanctuary of a garden. They don't seem to like them much.

"The Scarlet Lily Beetles are now in Illinois, but I haven't seen any yet."

Consider yourself fortunate...

The Sluggo has worked well this year, the damage has eased up since putting that down around some plants that were on the buffet menu. As did hand-picking in the early morning -- one of my "Herbstonne" rudbeckia had somewhere around 50 of the beasts dining on it. &!%#@!

Holy-ta-moly and YIKES!! I have never seen such humongous snails!! Not sure I could deal with that!! Do you have nightmares about them?? Third floor window……😱😱😱

debra

I rather like them, actually. Definitely not the stuff of nightmares. Their shells are beautifully marked and constructed. We also have some very pretty small ones in yellow, orange and brown/cream stripes. We collected and raced them as kids, although they were not very cooperative.

https://www.mlive.com/news/2024/07/90-invasive-african-snails-found-in-luggage-at-detroit-airport.html