Whats doing the nibbling?

Trotter

Hi all,

I don't have many flowering daffodils, but the ones I do have seem to be getting eaten by something thats ignoring the leaves and going straight to the bud.

Can anyone tell me what might be doing this and what I can do about it?
Thanks!

looksee

I have the exact same problem, I have not seen anything to this extent before. I would also like to hear any suggestions and/or solutions

looksee

I decided to do a bit of googling, and apart from 'daffodil buds chewed' producing an amazing extract from a book that can only be described as soft porn, there was very little!

Consensus seems to be that almost nothing likes daffodils as they are pretty toxic throughout. The nearest to a solution was slugs - I'd say they would be fairly small and energetic slugs to go to the top of a daffodil stem just to eat the flower. Most of my flowers are affected, though nearby is a roadside display with hundreds of apparently undamaged daffs.

Trotter

I'll give the slug pellets a whirl tomorrow and report back!

Trotter

Hey all,

Just to get back to the thread, no more nibbling! Whatever was doing it clearly didnt like the idea of the slug pellets so Ive got a fairly decent bunch of daffodils now.

Thanks for the help!

muckyhands

I had the same problem this year with my Alliums but it was the emerging leaf buds that got eaten. I put down organic slug pellets and it did the trick so I assume too it was slugs or snails.

For some reason though the bulbs that came up later than usual, in the last week ( I planted some bulbs much later than I should have) havent been touched.

Maybe theres something tastier around for them now to eat because I havent put any more pellets down.

looksee

Just been doing a bit of pottering and there does seem to be a lot of very tiny slugs around, newly hatched presumably? I don't know much about the life cycle of the slug!

Micheal GIY

Thats a good point from muckyhands on slugs switching to another food which they prefer. Slugs will move around as more preferable foods come available. Also, the 'taste' of plants change over time, and can become less palatable to slugs. A good way to use this knowledge is that slugs love young comfrey leaves in spring, so you can spread these in the vicintiy of plants you want to protect. As the year progresses, the slugs lose interest in the comfrey leaves, but by then your seedlings should have grown up enough to be better able to withstand attacks.