Kitchen Garden Forum

If i used salt on next years potato patch would it help kill slugs and would it have any lasting effects

The answer to both questions, I think, is Yes

As salt can be used to kill weeds in paving it gives you some idea of the effect of salt on a garden. Not good!

The answer to both questions is, I think, no.

Salt is only effective on slugs and snails if it is applied to them directly, or if they are drowned in brine. It kills them by catastrophically removing water from their bodies through osmosis. Salt is highly soluble, so it will probably take no more than one shower of rain to dilute it to the point where it is no longer effective at shrivelling slugs.

But it is also ruinous to soil structure and to plants. After a hard winter, road salt is a very real problem for the municipal gardener. Victorian gardeners used to recommend applying salt to soil where vegetables originating from the coast are grown: beetroot and asparagus are two that come to mind. It has since been proved to do more harm than good. Where seaweed is used as a mulch, it is left to be leached by rain before it is used on the garden.

In the long-ish term salt will have lasting harmful effects, but at least it will eventually leach away, which is how our oceans became salty.

Didn't victorious armies in history salt the land of the defeated? Bit of a clue there.

thanks all guess i will have to come up with some other bright idea as last years servere frost did not kill many off

Just brought in some spouts laced with slugs.. Last year when I put black plastic down, I sprinkled slug pellets underneath as .. breakfast for the hibernating cold blooded ones. Worked well on the one patch I did. Slug traps are good; I use cat food tins with diluted fruit jiuce. They soon fill up. With dead slugs.