[Ado 2]

I just did it once. It worked for my growing season. Seedlings etc were safe

[Gardini]

Ok that doesn't sound too bad worth giving it a go. I put out my bran there this evening to test it out - so hopefully some unsuspecting slugs will stuff themselves into oblivion later .

[Keeks]

[Sue Deacon]

I have used Sluggo and nematodes (try amazon for the nematodes). Fewer slugs but still overun with snails! My mum's beloved hostas got clobbered early on but a combination of the above (and a very helpful thrush) has seen them recover.

Sluggo works very well around lettuce and celery.

[Gardini]

Well I've tried the bran over the last few nights, unsure how successful it was but I do know a few birds definitely got plumper off it . Need to build a some little shelters for it to stop the birds and will try again....

[Gautama]

There's any organic slug pellet sold by the Irish Seed Savers Association (and others that promote organic growing) that works quiet well.
It's a chemical, but that doesn't mean it can't be used in organic gardening.
(Don't forget that chemical fertilisers are NOT permitted in organic gardening but certain chemical pest control ARE permitted, e.g. Bluestone).
Anyway, when the slugs eat these organic chemical pellets they take 12 hours to die. As they feel sick they retreat to a safe haven, die, and rot into the soil. No birds or other wildlife consume the slug and the poison.
Traditional slug pellets kill the slugs in less than an hour, leaving their dead bodies scattered around the place. Then birds see them, eat them, get poisoned too.

[tagwex]

Well I bought a 500 g jar of those blue pellets. Trade name escapes me at the moment. Liberally sprinkled the greenhouse with them and yet I still find healthy slugs in and around my lettuces. So its a no to killing within the hour.

[Blowin]

Tagwex. look for 'Doff' pellets in a white plastic container. They're probably no different to all the others, in that they're the same colour etc., but each pellet's only a fraction of the size of the ones we normally see. It's therefore easy to squirt a few round each seedling as you plant them and, in my case, I haven't lost a single one last year or this. Being smaller, they seem to last much longer too.

[Gardini]

Slug bait which are iron phosphate based are still allowed (e.g sluggo) - if uses responsibly should have little ill effects on other wildlife. Doff as far as I know are Metaldehyde-based so should not be used for organic gardening. .

Think overall you probably need a combination of Sluggo & nemaslug for slugs and a good old beer trap for snails from what I can see.

[Blowin]

Fair enough, but, while I'm generally in favour of an organic approach wherever possible, I'm prepared to 'stray' if I must. To the purist that'll mean I'm not organic, but I can live with that.

[Sue Deacon]

[Gardini]

Just learning the organic side myself - trying to figure out which products I can use and which are effective at moment - think my next stop is caterpillars - done a fair bit of damage to my cabbages this year - Think I will cover them next year with a fleece.

[Gautama]

If you have the time and wish to save money and the planet, the most environmentally friendly way of tackling slugs is probably to "grow your own" nematodes.
I've never tried it but it seems straightforward enough.
Google it, there was an article in one of the Lahndahn papers about it a few years back.

[Blowin]

I'm a little bit suspicious about systems you have to 'learn', if only because the information you look up is only what another human being thinks? Essentially, if something has grown, it needed nutrients to form so, when it decays, those goodies will be available for re-use if sited next to a new plant. Back in the UK some years ago the bracken on a local common was mown and stacked up in a huge heap. I availed myself of some of it and it composted down into a nice dark moist material but, being bracken, was presumably full of cyanide. Nature copes with these things so that's what I rely on but, as Sue says, if it nukes the natural live things, it probably isn't good. Having said that, boiled rhubarb leaves (highly poisonous, at least to us) will blast aphids off things like broad beans without further damage to the plot. Nature is perfection, so look there first?

[Sue Deacon]

Blowin - in the same vein, the same gardeners who used rhubarb leaves would have used nicotine smoke cones in the greenhouse. It has always struck me as odd that my Dave enjoys inhaling a substance that, in Victorian times, a gardener would light then leg it out of the greenhouse before the stuff took effect. I mean only an idiot would drink rhubarb leaf tea, but it's OK to smoke a poisonous fumigant. (You'd never guess him smoking is the bane of my life)

Just a thought, I wonder if dog-end tea would work on gooseberry sawfly? nothing else does!