Last spring, slugs got the better of me and entire rows of seedlings vanished, repeatedly.
I’m 99% organic, so I don’t want to go for the nuclear slug pellet option. (I did it once a few years back in a fit of frustration and it’s really not for me.)
I didn’t know last year that slugs can be a particular problem in no-dig beds, especially in the first few years after you’ve established them. I do now, having learned the hard way last year.
So, here is my cunning plan, drawn from various different sources of advice and experience over the years…
- Tidying up: I’m going to cut the grass short on the pathways between beds and removing any self-seeded annuals from around my seedlings to remove slug habitat (I would normally be relaxed about both of these, and quite like my plot to be a bit scruffy around the edges, but the happy scruffiness and random annual flowers that appear aren’t worth losing my crops to, sadly, so I’m going to try being more tidy and see if it helps)
- Nematodes: I’ll apply nematodes around the time I’m sowing seedlings, on a day when there’s rain and grey skies forecast for a few days afterwards – this is a natural way to reduce the slug population by boosting the population of nematodes that kill them; they exist naturally in the soil, but you can temporarily boost them by applying them through a powdery mixture, dissolved in water and applied with a watering can – if you time it right it can make a big difference around springtime when you have a lot of tiny seedlings vulnerable to the slimy critters
- Raking: I’m going to try lightly raking the surface just before I sow to expose the slug eggs to the birds and dry out the top layer of soil a bit to make it less hospitable to them – I learned this from a no-till farmer who swears by this method on his farm, so I’m going to give it a try at allotment scale and see how it goes (I’ve decided raking is ok in my no-dig system, if done sparingly, because it’s only disturbing the top couple of cm of soil and it might help my crops actually survive, which many didn’t last year!)
- Barriers: I’ll use some natural barriers including: wool (I save the wool that’s used to insulate food I get delivered – it works a treat cut into squares with a slit to the centre and fitted as a collar around brassica stalks); crushed seashells (which also add calcium to the soil – I buy the sacks of the stuff intended as chicken feed and apply it liberally around seedlings and freshly planted out plants); copper rings around particularly precious plants (expensive, but endlessly reusable and quite effective especially if paired with wool or shells inside the ring); and copper mesh along the whole of a row of seedlings – I tried the mesh for the first time last year and it seemed to work well with my directly sown lettuces so I’m going to invest in some more this year and use it more widely
- Pellets: organic pellets, applied just twice in the season – particularly around sowing time
- Plants: I’m going to try and do a better job of hardening off plants grown at home and growing them a. bit bigger and tougher before I take them to the allotment to plant out, so they’re really good and healthy when they go in instead of sitting small, weak and pretty waiting to be attacked, as happened to some of my plantings last year
I’m hoping that this combination of actions will provide a resilient defence. We’ll see how it goes….
Keeping the Plot 