Slugging it Out

With the deep snow and freezing weather and in an effort to get this Blog up to date, I will take you back to a warmer time to recount our battle with Pest No.1, the Slug .  During the prolonged dry period between April and June, they lulled us into a false sense of security until the rains came for the start of the school holidays (this is Wales after all).  All those tender shoots were decimated by a plague of slime.  We are trying to be as organic as possible, but even the blue supposedly organic slug pellets somehow seem wrong and roaming around in the middle of the night picking them off the lettuce plants is perhaps going too far.

There is lots of advice out there from pots filled with beer to scattering Comfrey leaves around as a sacrificial fodder, however, we were looking for a more elegant solution and it appears that it is Copper.  Slugs do not like crossing copper as apparently they get a minor electric shock that deters them.   There are many products on the market including rings for individual plants, however, we needed an industrial scale solution: copper tape.

After much research on the internet (ebay), I found a suppler of self adhesive copper tape at a fraction of the price charged by Garden Centres and Horticultural Outlets.  I therefore bought enough rolls to go all around both of the raised beds and, with the help of Basil, give them a very attractive pinstripe effect (no I am not going bald, that is the equivalent of red eye on the scalp).

The proof of the pudding is in the eating (not an analogy to take to far with slugs) and so we waited for the slugs to come out of hiding and head for the restaurant thoughtfully created for them.  The sequence of photos below speak for themselves....

However, life is never quite that simple.  The larger slugs did not seem deterred by the copper tape and waltzed happily over it (to die eating slug pellets...) and I did catch the tape with my brush cutter which came off second best by quite a long way.  You also have to keep the tape quite shiny with a pan scourer otherwise the oxidised surface is less effective.  In other places it simply fell off where the tape did not stick too well to the timber sleepers.  I think there was also a resident population of slugs in the beds that saw no reason to go and hide in the surrounding grass each night.

Next year (this year now!) I will try and paint a strip of varnish around the sleepers first to aid adhesion.  I did think about 2 parallel strips a few millimetres and a battery; that really would give them a shock.  Perhaps a modification for 2012. One very effective method of control is the Chickens; they simply love slugs, however, they would probably eat everything else a well!  I am sure the saga will continue.