Slug pellets

Hi Robin, I'm not sure but I hate to use chemicals in the garden at best of times.

I know slugs are a pain but hedgehogs eat them, if you can attract them in your garden.

What I use to do is, pop old potatoe, carrot peelings around the plants or pop a "slug pub" in the garden using an empty bottle with some beer in and the slugs get drunk and drown. Or, go on slug patrol in the night and get rid :)

Hi,

They are supposed to be less toxic to wildlife as they just contain a little bit of iron - which slugs are very sensitive to but supposedly not enough iron to harm anything else.

I tried using them on my allotment and the pellets just kept disappearing. I would put plenty down before I left and when I came back the next day every single pellet was gone. I tried covering the pelleted areas with fleece. The next day I would find the fleece full of small torn holes and once again all the pellets gone.

Eventually I figured out they were being eaten by rats.

Apparently slug pellets are made from the same sorts of stuff pet food is made from, which is why slugs want to eat them. The manufactures add in the poison and also a substance called Bitrex, which tastes very bitter and so discourages pets and other animals from eating what would otherwise be very tasty pellets and being poisoned.

Because the iron based pellets are not so toxic to other animals the manufactures leave out the Bitrex...

...and create rat food! I never found any dead rats and they ate a huge number of pellets before I solved the mystery and stopped using them, so they are probably not toxic to rats at least...

We never use them in the garden, but if you do they should be used very sparsly, one or 2 per plant you want to protect. What we do, is to go out at night after dark with a torch & collect all the slugs & snails that are munching our plants. We then feed them to the chickens the next morning or release them over the road in a hedge if the chickens are "slugged out". Usually 3 consectutive nights sorts out the problem. It's a bit messy & you have to keep knocking them back in the bucket, but its better than pellets. I never believe anything that says it's harmless!!

Bran is another effective slug control. You can put a ring of bran around individual plants or groups of seedlings. Whenever gardening magaazines conduct simple trials of non-toxic slug control techniques, bran always seems to comes out as one of the best.

I've used it a lot and it really does work.

I'm with the third full beer can brigade: they get loads of them.

I have to say that this talk of chemicals that potentially harms wildlife doesn't sit well with me at all.

The whole point of wildlife gardening is planting and designing features to encourage the types of wildlife that will predate on what some would class as pests.

I use zero chemicals in the garden and after a few fatalities plant wise I soon learnt what can and can't be grown. Four years on I now find that I can grow some of those early fatalities as the whole balance and food chain in the garden is in place and the 'pests' are generally being mopped up by something else!

I had a terrible case of aphid infestation on one of my Honeysuckle plants last Spring (as below)...

At first this worried me but then the bluetit pair that had young in one of our nest boxes cleared it for us and fed their young chicks the aphids...

last Autumn the same Honeysuckle produced berries that some young bullfinch feasted on and was obviously no worse for the infestation earlier in the year....

I think this nicely demonstrates that wildlife gardening is about finding the right balance, so please ditch the slug pellets, be a little patient and start trying to control some of your pests by good planning and management of your plot....

Best

Higgy

I'm not a fan of chemicals either and have lost plants to slugs and snails.  I've recently tried copper tape for plant in pots or trays which does work to some extent, and have some wool pellets but have yet to try them.  Both harmless but just uncomfortable.  My garden still has plenty of wild areas where they can munch to their hearts content so I don't think they can complain!