slugs in the garden

I don't know why but all the snail trails in my garden are up the walls and over the soffits and fascia boards . I think there are hundreds up there or in the gutters. When the sun catches the side of the house it looks like a traffic flow film

Frogs is a long term project though bags even if you indulge in a bit of clandestine spawn or tadpole rustling (which is illegal) the blighters take about 3 years to reach maturity and start to breed in a garden pond. And then they do not know how to stop. Someone i know filled in a pond and for years after the stupid frogs were laying eggs on the lawn.

I heard Bob Flowerdew on the radio in the last few weeks. I hope nothing has happened to him.

Just checked - he's fine, and continues to be a regular panellst on Gardeners' Question Time. I love his irreverent attitude to gardening that he sees as pretentious or having no useful purpose (not that I share it!)

Frogs aroung here lays eggs in puddles on the farm track, which the farmer's quad bike then drives through . That's partly why we dug a pond, not far away but behind out garden wall!

We had a pond with a surface area of about two square metres in Oxon. Top frog count was about 40. Newts 70. Amazing what lives in pond sludge!

I suppose our very distant ancestors did too

Coffee grounds, broken-up eggshells and woody sprigs of rosemary encircled my precious peas and beans last year, and it did keep the slugs off, but they still crawled up my back door and sat on the glass looking at me - ugh!!!

How do the slugs (very large ones) get into my kitchen? No obvious gaps in structure .I now hesitate to go barefoot in kitchen without looking first.
Stepping on a slug is not pleasant.

Quite right folks, Bob is alive and well; it was John Cushnie I was thinking of, but in my current befuddled state I mixed them up.

!!

Loads of spawn last year, none yet. But then the pool has only just become unfrozen,

Yes we did bags live in ponds etc.
Temperatures well below seasonal average so not expecting early spring

Hi been out looking for hedge hogs and frog's don't seem to be any about have started collecting egg shell will have to take up drinking beer to get cans but have to draw a line at cutting them up just to weird have some salt and grit do think that would work(smile)

Maniac, Stepping on a large snail with bare feet is even worse, which I did late one night as I crept out to water the greenhouse. Crunch!

All our GC enjoy a slug/snail hunt in our garden.I feel all creatures deserve a chance of a life so tip them onto the bank of our stream at the bottom of our garden 'to have a happy life there'! (Keeping fingers crossed they are not homing slugs.) I always apologise to snails if I inadvertently crush them underfoot at night.

bit cold yet round here for frogs or hedgehogs to do much venturing.
maniac all houses, even newly built ones, have a few little gaps. There is a technique called pressure testing for gaps where heat loss can occur and it is surprising. The places where pipes enter and leave the house would be the first place i would look. It would only have to be a small gap. Slugs come in, heat goes out.
You're not bringing flower potted plants in are you, because slugs can come in inside the soil.

I have a severe slug phobia, so My DH once kindly gathered all the slugs he could find , put them in a carrier bag , sprinkled salt on them and put them in the wheelie bin..........it was like night of the living dead next time I opened the lid, to find all the slugs in various states of oozey slithering heading up towards me

I favour hedgehogs and frogs as a way of keeping them down, but am short on hedgehog since we moved but plan a shallow pond this summer

joannapiano, the land-living slugs that you find in your garden will not be amphibious, so if you don't want them to come back into your garden, you might be as well to chuck them right over the stream then they won't swim back. Mind you, the success or failure of this would depend on how the stream runs in relation to your garden boundary.

Good morning Bags, have tried to throw the bucket load of slugs right over the water but often miss and the poor things end up floating down the stream.

I found that copper tape around plant pots will keep them away. Maybe laying some around susceptible plant might work ? PLEASE be careful if you use slug pellets, they can be fatal if eaten by cats and dogs.

Thanks JessM I'll look where. slugs might be coming in.No I haven't brought any plant pots inside.
Strange thing is that in all my many homes I've never had slugs coming into house until this last year.--and they are such huge ones!
In garden copper tape round pots gives some protection or siting pots on a tray filled with pebbles/water.e.g. with hostas .As Bags said they are not amphibious so dont like crossing the water barrier.

Ah well, not to worry, jpiano, you will essentially only have added them to the food chain, either directly for other animals, or indirectly by their rotting into the stream bed and ultimately fertilising the land and so feeding plants

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Just watched YouTube video of slugbell. One small patch with five or six planted amongst the flowers - at £12.99 each, that's an expensive purchase!

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Gardenog my initial outlay for just my kitchen garden would be over £150. That's not £1 a year - you only get one for £1 a year by your calculation. That's not gong to tackle the average slug problem! I would need at least a dozen, according to the YouTube demonstration