Kitchen Garden Forum

I have found the most slug resistant varieties to be Pentland Javelin, Kestrel and Charlotte. All three were clean this year but Desiree and King Edward were riddled with holes

Dear Caz,
Sorry to have come in a bit late on this one, but I tried Nemaslug for the first time this year and it did reduce the number of slugs. It is worth noting that it is not so efficient on clay and the big ones. So I used a mixture of Nemaslug and pellets this yer and I does seem to ahv done the trick. I find Kestrel comes up trumps each time on our allotment.
Hilary

Generally speaking, everyone seems to be in agreement that the early varieties and salad varieties are the least attractive to slugs.

I only grew Charlotte as earlies this year, and they were untouched, so I'll probably go with those again next year (plus we all liked the flavour).

It's more difficult to reach a conclusion with the later ones - every single variety seems to have its devoted fans and sworn enemies. I guess a lot depends on soil type, local climate etc!

After reading all your responses, I am almost certainly going to try Rooster, but I think I might see if any of my allotment neighbours want to do a bit of seed potato swapping so that I can try individual rows of several different varieties to see which do best on my plot.

Who knows, next year the weather might be better and slugs might not be such a big problem

Hello Charles.

just came across your post re Desiree.
I used to grow them along with other varieties.
I always had some with slug and blight damage every year, when I did not have any/much in the other varieties.
Nothing wrong with their taste, just the annoyance of much more spoilt ones than other varieties.
Then I discovered Romano,(Desree is one of it's parents) minimal slug and blight damage from then on,excepting 2007 season.
I use lots of stable manure(free) and FYM (bought) and some home made compost (never enough to go round.)
The plot holder right beside mine grows only Desiree and one year when I mentioned about the damage, he said his was perfect, never any damage, and to prove it he dug out a couple of plants. They were perfect, no damage and no soil clinging to them!

I was speaking to him as he was digging his out some weeks ago and he was complaining about how his Disiree this year was almost useless, blight and slug damage to most off them, and they were terrible to look at,I had miminal damage on mine!

The one difference in this year and previous, was that he never used manure(too lazy to barrow in in) up to this year, he always used lots of Growmore, whereas this year he carted lots and as he said other years his crop lifted cleanly without any soil clinging to them, this year they were covered in mud. Although our two plots are side by side, my soil is very heavy and his is very much lighter and easier to dig!

What does this say about having lots off humus in the soil?

Cheers!

I've just thought, Picasso from Marshalls is quite slug resistant, a good size for baking and has a good flavour.