February Tips
FEBRUARY
NOW IS THE TIME TO…..let slug wars begin!
When the weather warms, slugs will start to emerge from the soil to feast on all the fresh young shoots of plants which are beginning to peep up. They particularly like damp, shady areas. If you have a garden teaming with wildlife, (hedgehogs, frogs, ground beetles and birds), you won’t have much of a problem.
If you stroll around your garden at dusk you can see the slugs and snails starting their nocturnal search for food. If you aren’t too squeamish, put on rubber gloves and you can easily remove and dispose of them. Starting this ritual early in the season can make a huge difference to the amount of damage. So much cheaper and better for the micro organisms soil than using slug pellets.
Slugs are very discerning and you will soon learn which plants are their favourites! Beware, too, of planting out immediately any new purchases from the garden centre, which may have been grown in a heated greenhouse. Slugs will love their soft, tasty leaves. Let new plants harden off outside on a table or bench, out of reach of slugs, before you plant them.
Ingenious methods of controlling slugs are manifold:
-Beer traps. Sink a plastic container in the soil. Leave a small gap in its lid for slugs to enter. Put good quality beer in the bottom- slugs seem to turn up their noses at ‘value’ beer! You can compost the contents of the container.
-Barriers. You can surround susceptible plants with various substances which might keep slugs at a distance: crushed egg shells, grit, coffee grounds. Unless I have a race of super-slugs in my garden, in my experience, slugs can be fairly determined and will eventually breach most barriers. However, I have found sheep’s wool pellets fairly effective, though expensive. Just spread a few pellets around the plants, then water. The pellets swell to make an impenetrable barrier.
-Bran sprinkled around plants is supposed to swell inside the slug.
-Copper rings. Surround the plant with a copper ring, or stick copper tape around a plastic ‘collar’ which surrounds the plant. Slugs don’t like touching the copper.
It is great to see the snowdrops out already I also noticed daffodils in bloom in Yeovil.
wjn2010
