Garden With Ernest

Controlling slugs and snails without harming the enviroment has always been a chore that I could do without. That’s why I now feed them, and I also encourage biodiversity in my garden.

Lots of unwanted slugs and snails kept munching their way around my garden, despite all my efforts to banish them.

Let nature lend a hand

I used to work hard to keep my grass green, flat and short, my flowers upright and blooming. I was endlessly weeding, dead-heading, feeding, staking and watering my plants. Only to find some pesky critter had devoured them over night.

Whenever it rains slugs, and snails appear from nowhere and munch on my young plants. When it is hot and dry, aphids move in. Then caterpillars materialise, and makemince meat of my kale.  

And this onslaught, used to bother me. I felt like I was in a battle with nature. I wanted to find a way of controlling slugs and snails that was wildlife friendly.

At some point in my gardening endeavours it dawned on me that my garden was not ever going to relent to my control. No matter how much I tried, it was never going to remain as a fixed picture of perfection.

My garden has a mind of it’s own

My garden is never going to stand still and stay as I left it. The grass will always keep on growing, weeds will jump in any space they can find, and pests and disease will want to run riot down straight rows. Because my garden is a part of our ever changing, dynamic, ecosystem, it has an important part to play in our environment. And together our gardens can help build more biodiversity.

Since our environment is in trouble, I want to do my best to help it, or at least, not to make it any worse.

Controlling slugs and snails naturally

I have always liked nature and wild places so the switch to a more naturalistic kind of garden seems natural to me.

When I had this aha moment, I realised that, I had to learn how to garden with nature. This meant I had to find a natural way of controlling slugs and snails. That means encouraging all insects, not just the ones I like.

I started with slugs and snails.

Now obviously I don’t want my garden overrun with slugs or snails. I do grow a lot of vegetables, and I want to be able to eat some of them myself.

So I did a little sluggish studying. And I discovered that you only ever see between 5-10% of the slugs that live in your garden. Most slugs stay at ground level or deep underground. Therefore the ones you do see are just the tip of the ice berg.

Slugs and snails are hermaphrodites, which means every one can lay eggs, up to 100 of them at a time. Some can even self fertilize. So each one can produce as much as, 90,000 descendants, in it’s life time.

Also their eggs are tough, they can remain in the soil, for years, just waiting for the right conditions for them to hatch out.

slugs and snails run round the world

Slugs and snails have colonised most of the world. It would take a lot of beer traps to even make a dent in their numbers.

Although they may be a nusance they are essential. Slugs are a huge part of our ecosystem and have been living on the earth for about 150 million years. So the natural world must have a way of keeping the numbers of slugs under control, otherwise our world would be devoid of plant life. A garden rich in biodiversity, keeps pests under control naturally.

There will be times when pest populations increase, but give nature the opportunity, and it will naturally keep pests undercontrol.

So now I no longer wage war on the slimy slug, instead I feed them, and then I invite their enemies in to dine.

Slugs and their close relations, snails, like soft plant tissue, and decaying plant material. Aparently slugs have 27,000 teeth, but even with all these teeth, most slugs can only eat soft food.    

Therefore if all you have growing in your Spring garden is soft young lettuces, most will just end up as slug food.

Free food for slugs and snails

So I now use several methods to protect my vulnerable plants, and I also attract in predictors that can feast on my thriving population of slugs and snails. And yes the population does need to be thriving.

In warm wet weather molluscs, like slugs and snails come out from their hiding places to feed and breed. So that is when my plants are most at risk.

So my first approach is feed the slugs with rotting leaves, grass clipping, and such. But I place these in small heaps away from my delicate plants. Slugs are creatures of habit, they will return night after night to feed from the same place.

It is also believed that slugs and snails have a built in homing instinct, and return to the same spot to hide, or sleep, or whatever it is that slugs do when they are not eating.

Diversity builds biodiversity

Meanwhile I also make sure that I have some appropriate habitat in my garden for at least some of the creatures that feed on slugs.

Here’s some of the creatures that we want to encourage to live in to our garden to build biodiversity.

• Birds, Blackbirds, Thrushes and Robins eat slugs and snails.
• Toads and frogs, they will eat almost any insect, that they can catch and fit into the mouth.
• Hedgehogs, like a varied diet including slugs and snails.
• Slow-worms, like so much other wildlife, slow-worms are under threat because of loss of habitat.
• Lizards, like to hunt during the day.
• Grass snakes
• Lots of beetles, including Ground beetles and the Devil’s coach horse beetle, they are powerful predators of the insect world.
• Centipedes are also predators, and slugs are definitely on their menu.
• Harvestmen.
• Flies, marsh flies and fireflies, feed on slugs.
• Shrews.
• Moles.
• Ants: several species of ants specialise in eating slugs. And slug and snail eggs are eaten by many different types of ants.
• And even some types slugs (Leopard Slug) and snails (Roman snail), will eat other slugs and snails.

What is the best sort of habitat for these creatures?

• Indigenous plants, trees and shrubs.
• Garden ponds.
• Dead hedges.
• Piles of stones, rocks, twigs , leaves or wood.
• Undisturbed soil. Keep it covered with mulch or plants, and don’t dig it.
• Leave areas of grass uncut.

Don’t be too tidy; leave some areas of your garden wild and untouched.

Have a diverse range of plants and habitats. Beacause a garden that is full of biodiversity, can keep the slug and snail problem under control. The more diversity you include in your garden the lower the risk of any pest breeding out of control.

We need to stop needlessly tiding our gardens, and offer more places for wildlife and let nature do its thing.  We need to accept that all insects have a place in our gardens, they all need a niche to survive. Insects are a vital part of our ecosystem, an essential part of the natural environment. And by just leaving natural areas in our gardens we will help wildlife to recover and slowly the balance in your garden will be restored.

My philosophy on gardening is plant enough to feed everyone in the garden.

Some slugs will eat your plants, but most slugs are scavengers. They will eat  decaying organic matterials, which includes dead, damaged and rotting plants, leaf litter, rotting wood, fallen fruit, fungi, animal poop, carrion and decomposing compost. So controlling slugs and snails is a must , if we want to be able to grow culivated plants. However it is important that we learn to live with them not try to eliminate them.