Slugs and Snails

Jonathan, Bulls Farm, January 2021

Slugs and Snails can cause problems in the allotment. If they get the chance they’ll eat all the best bits of our produce: lettuce hearts, ripe tomatoes, juicy cabbage leaves, even beetroots aren’t safe. So, what’s to do?

Well you absolutely mustn’t use ordinary slug pellets. The Metaldehyde chemical is completely toxic to any creature which might eat a pellet, or which might eat a slug which has eaten the pellet – any bird, especially a thrush, and hedgehogs, foxes and badgers too.

You can now buy slug pellets made from wool which act as a protective barrier which the slugs and snails won’t cross. Being sheep farmers, we use wool which was sheared from the back-ends of our sheep – the dags, to use a good old Aussie expression –  and spread it on the ground round the plants we want to protect. I’ll bring a sack of this wool to the allotment when we start growing stuff and we can try it.

Of course, natural predators are the best solution, and these include slow worms, hedgehogs, ground beetles and rover beetles, and centipedes. So these allies should be welcomed.