Advertisement
If you have a new account but are having problems posting or verifying your account, please email us on hello@boards.ie for help. Thanks :)
Hello all! Please ensure that you are posting a new thread or question in the appropriate forum. The Feedback forum is overwhelmed with questions that are having to be moved elsewhere. If you need help to verify your account contact hello@boards.ie
Hi there,
There is an issue with role permissions that is being worked on at the moment.
If you are having trouble with access or permissions on regional forums please post here to get access: https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058365403/you-do-not-have-permission-for-that#latest

Slugs eating tulips

  • 20-03-2022 7:21pm
    #1
    Registered Users Posts: 197 ✭✭


    Slugs seem to have eaten most of my tulips .Bulbs planted last November and some which are survived have their buds broken or munched off .Any solutions others in the forum can recommend? Local woodies have slug pallets but we wanted to avoid using chemicals /insecticides .


    Tagged:


Comments

  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 11,397 ✭✭✭✭Jim_Hodge


    Try some sharp grit or eggshells around them perhaps.



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 870 ✭✭✭SnowyMuckish


    Mine get chewed too but I don’t mind the leaves being damaged as they’re insignificant anyways as long as the flowers are ok.

    I found eggshells didn’t work for me a few years ago, they used to just slither over them and munch my cabbages.

    Ive been using chem free ‘slug gone’ wool pellets at the base of young plants last year and I must say they’ve deterred a lot of slugs!



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 11,397 ✭✭✭✭Jim_Hodge


    I stopped all treatments and attempts at discouraging slugs many years ago, as none worked very well. I went organic and encouraged wildlife. Between birds and hedgehogs I have no damage from slugs or snails anymore. It took a few years but it all seems in balance now.



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 870 ✭✭✭SnowyMuckish


    That’s great! I think it’s all about the balance, I don’t really mind damage to established plants but I do try to keep off the veg and new young plants.

    Love the hedgehogs here too, like hoovers in our garden!



  • Registered Users Posts: 197 ✭✭galaxy12


    Thanks , will give both the options a try and see how it goes



  • Advertisement
  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,194 ✭✭✭wildwillow


    If you want a quick solution, beer traps work and you can feed the dead slugs to the birds. Milk or a sweet liquid will also do. I have been known to seek them out with a torch at night. Look carefully under the leaves and you will find lots of them. The eggs look like tiny opaque balls and can be destroyed.

    In the long term, having birds and hedgehogs is the best bet. Nothing else really works unless you keep replacing it.

    Slug pellets do work, of course, but one should avoid using as far as possible. I sometimes use them sparingly around pots of seedlings in the green house but only when it's early spring and the birds can't enter. A little slug lurking under the rim of a pot can destroy all my efforts overnight.



  • Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators Posts: 4,740 Mod ✭✭✭✭Tree


    Nematodes help as a long term solution, I find if I'm good at putting it down in summer/autumn, the following spring there aren't so many slugs hatching as there might have been.



  • Registered Users Posts: 197 ✭✭galaxy12


    Do you use one trap per plant or a few traps near the plants where slugs attack the most . Might give this a try first



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 13,965 ✭✭✭✭Igotadose


    I use a bunch of traps interspersed with the plants.

    I don't use beer. Beer is expensive. Just 2 liters of water, 1 packet of the cheap bread yeast from Lidl, 1 tbsp. cheap white sugar, 1 tbsp. cheap white flour. Mix it all up, pour into traps.

    I make my traps from old plastic jars like peanut butter or (best ones) Ovaltine jars. Keep the lids, drill large holes in the sides of the jars with a hole saw, about 1.5" diameter seems about right, so that you can bury the jars about halfway and fill with the bait mix. With lids on the jars the rain won't wash them away. They last around a week, well, that's my interval for replacing the bait. Just dump the drowned slugs. You can also just bury plastic trays like the ones mushrooms come in (with a little depth, about 2-3 inches) and the slugs'll drown in those, too, but the rain makes short work of the bait water.

    Eggshells had no affect, zilch, zip, nada and I used a lot of eggshells. "Slug deterrent" wool, they probably took it and knitted little slug sweaters for all the difference it made. I won't use the toxic baits. Organic baits get eaten by the birds, some of whom have occasionally shown interest in the slugs but not to any great effect. Hedgehogs are a rare site out here. Back in the US we had opossums, they actually worked pretty well to keep the slugs down and we had some pretty scary large Pacific Northwest slugs, bigger but less numerous than what's crawling around here in West Kerry.

    Going out in the early morning/after it gets dark gets old really fast esp. as the days grow longer. It needs to be good and dark for awhile. It does work, but you need to do it like every day. I need my sleep so I don't.

    I've heard that if you lay wooden planks around the beds, the slugs will congregate there when the sun's out because it's dark and moist. I am going to try that in a couple of places, but with the Irish weather who knows how much sun there'll be.

    Haven't tried nematodes. "Nemaslug" seems pretty expensive, my experienced gardener neighbor said it was a fail for him when he did try it.



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,194 ✭✭✭wildwillow


    Igotadose has explained the whole process wonderfully.



  • Advertisement
  • Registered Users Posts: 197 ✭✭galaxy12




  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 13,965 ✭✭✭✭Igotadose


    Herself also recommended mulching with beach sand. She did same in a tulip bed that adjoins other beds, and the slugs bothered the daffodils, which we'd assumed were toxic, but weren't mulched. The tulips were left alone. Just ordinary beach sand scooped up from a local beach, nothing special.

    Sand seems to do well for blocking weeds.



  • Registered Users Posts: 1 victorwendt


    Copper (copper tape works well), crushed eggshells, coffee grinds, clear areas where slugs can hide around your garden and manage weeds. Other than that you can try catching them during night time and relocating.



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 11,397 ✭✭✭✭Jim_Hodge


    Beach sand will leach salt into the soil - not a Good idea.



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 13,965 ✭✭✭✭Igotadose


    My bad. Turns out we used quarry sand, not beach sand. If you're concerned with beach sand, rinse it in a pillowcase. Salt won't persist in it.



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 11,397 ✭✭✭✭Jim_Hodge


    Sand is the same idea as grit or crushed eggshell.



  • Registered Users Posts: 197 ✭✭galaxy12


    My traps did catch a few slugs managed to have some success saving a few tulips in the end ..



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,241 ✭✭✭Stephen_Maturin


    Get a yourself a frog pond

    You'll never have problems again



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 11,397 ✭✭✭✭Jim_Hodge


    You don't need a pond. Plenty of cover and damp shaded area will do. Frogs breed in water but spend virtually all their adult lives on land. I've no pond but plenty of frogs in the garden.



  • Registered Users Posts: 1 rudolphglobe
    dumb ways to die


    Sand is similar to grit or crushed eggshell.

    @dumb ways to die



  • Advertisement
  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 13,965 ✭✭✭✭Igotadose


    We live in a maritime region. Salt in the soil is a thing. And, this year, herself's gotten a 2d crop of tulips for the first time (after the sand was used.) So maybe 'beach sand is bad' isn't 100% the case. Also, being in an Irish maritime region, we get way more wind, rain and wet than the average, including awful salt storms where the waves crash against the cliffs, spewing seawater upwards to be caught by the wind. Might be we get enough rain the salt doesn't actually leach too badly into the soil. The salt on any plants leaves, though, is bad.

    As far as eggshells and slugs goes, well, the only way I've found eggshells do any good is if I take a wide loo roll, put a coating of vaseline around the top 1/3rd or so, and dredge that in crushed eggshell. That 'ring' is then buried around the plant with the eggshell barrier at the surface. That seems to keep slugs out for a time. Just spreading it on the ground even in a thick cover is useless, your Irish slugs are brutal little feckers and the only predators we've seen have been the rare hedgehogs.

    Plus... snails. Even worse, harder to kill.



Advertisement