Do snails have feelings?

Marelli There is no way I could eat enough eggs!

Not even if you collected all your eggshells for a year, nellie? Wash them out, let them dry, keep them in a bucket.

I've done that.

I've used coffee grounds, rosemary twigs and crushed eggshells in an unbroken circle round my peas and beans. It seems to work, but to look at that bed, you'd think a practising witch had been scattering her spells and making slug curses!

Copper wire is very effective, or you can buy something called Slug Band which you put around your flower pots (it has a sticky backing) - very effective for DH's hostas, but obviously not practical for flower beds. I do my best to live and let live in the garden, but when I came down the garden to find some beasties had chewed the heads off the irises, I wasn't so charitable! Good thing about this dry spell, no sign of the slugs which usually gallop across the garden in the damp weather. Nothing seems to eat slugs, though spent a lovely five minutes watching a thrush disinter and gobble a snail this morning. We have plenty of birds, toads and frogs, but nothing fancies the flavour of a slug!

I use slug pellets for the slugs, but I try to collect up as many snails as I can and throw them over into the playing field because I've always rather liked snails. When I was little I used to catch them and keep them in a bucket full of grass. Actually we've not had that many slugs or snails this year. Presumably it's a combination of the very cold spring and the hot, dry weather we're having now.

Get a hedgehog or better still a pregnant hedgehog,

www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2006/sep/23/practicaladvice.homesandgardens1

Also you can get eco-pellets! I tend to collect mine and put them in the cuttings bag that goes to the tip, it is kept in a passage way away from the main garden so takes a while for them to crawl back!

My problem is cabbage white caterpillars..they consumed all my broccoli leaves!

I collect the slugs and snails and not the eco pellets!!! Sorry just read my post and saw how ambiguous it was!

I use slug/snail traps half filled with beer. They die happy and when I empty them onto the bird table my feathered friends scoff the lot, pronto and then sing for their supper

Ah yes. I used to use beer traps as well. <visions of drunken blackbirds>

The other thing the blackbirds got pissed on was sloes that had been making sloe gin. I dumped the filtered out sloes onto the compost heap. Oops.

If only slugs/snails liked dandelions! I thought it would be a good idea to collect snails and drown them in a bucket of water, only to find them happily climbing out. I chuck them over the brook, hoping they won't find their way back. However, now there is hardly any water in the brook.

Do they have feelings? Well they have quite complex nervous systems. They are distant cousins to octopus and squid which are the intellectual genius twins of the invertebrate world.
These complex nervous systems allow them to engage in intricate hermaphrodite mating rituals in which they shoot each other with a "love dart" and reel each other in, before exchanging sperm. In this weather they will be aestivating (hot? dry? - go into your shell and seal it up until it rains.) Slugs will nearly all be underground. Suspect any hosta damage is done and dusted for this year. My garden is dying of heat not molluscs.

I like molluscs, but only the marine variety

Prejudice Galen ?

All the leaves have been eaten off my chili and there are 6 snails clustered round it.
As doctor I can't take a life! Help!

They'll probably die of indigestion, galen...

One can but hope.
Thou shalt not kill
But need not strive
Needlessly
To keep alive!

In Margaret Atwood's The Year of the Flood, www.amazon.co.uk/Year-Flood-Margaret-Atwood/dp/1844085643
God's Gardeners recommend "relocating" slugs and snails.

I think that's a nice idea especially if you are not fond of your neighbours !

Tried that, Grossi, but they just crawled back. Do snails have homing instincts?

They may not have been the same ones. I read somewhere that when you clear out all the snails from an area another lot moves in.

I find slugs and snails absolutely fascinating. There are about 80 kinds of land snails in the UK, of which about 20 occur regularly in gardens. There are about 24 kinds of slugs of which about 12 turn up in our gardens. The great grey slug hangs out in damp buildings or even a wet patio. Their mating habits are brilliant - the courting couple climb up into a bush or tree, lowering themselves on a rope of thick mucus so that mating takes place suspended in mid air.

Over the years, I have avoided planting things I know our gastropods love, but I think the best way is not to be too tidy with your gardening, as most slugs and snails seem to prefer decaying matter to fresh stuff.

vegas you're welcome to the slug I pitched over my fence at 2 'clock this morning - it's headed in your direction if it carries on going! I've suspected a slug had got in the house for the last few days, as there was a trail near my cooker, and then yesterday morning I found a trail on the top of the hob. I came down in the early hours last night and there was a trail again. I opened the cupboard door next to the cooker to get a cloth and hob cleaner and there it was, crawling along the inside of the door - 3 inches long! Eughhhh!!!

I collected it in the dustpan, nipped outside and hurled the little bastard as far as I could. If it comes back, it's dead!!!

when I bet it was a great grey - confusingly, they're not always grey! I shall look out for a harassed looking slug coming my way

Great? ..... Great? (shakes head and wonders where that machete sharpener is)

vegs that mating sounds very cirque de soleil crossed with 50 shades of grey slug.