Just getting into homegrown veggies to discover the horror of slimey bags of nothing much eating your dinner before its even been dug up – this can turn even the most consistently vegan hippies into calculating, muderous plotters. I’m (reliably?) informed that a slug can have 11,000 grandchildren, so lets not worry too much about reducing the slug gene pool. To help you plan your speciside the Centre for Alternative Technology in North Wales has compiled this vicious guide.
It covers beer traps, citrus fruit and many things to do with scissors, but I’ve yet to find mention of the ‘homeopathic remedy’ (in this case read ‘witchery’) that a friend recommended:
- Take one dead slug.
- Burn it.
- Dilute in lots and lots of water.
- Spray all around the garden and watch incredulously as for the rest of the summer your veggies grow unmutilated. Or maybe not. I’ll keep you posted just as soon as I’ve managed to set one alight.
Finally, in ecological terms, your biggest cause of slugs is your garden’s tidiness. Beetles are a natural predator and like to live in dead and rotting wood – so don’t clear it away!