Kitchen Garden Forum

I use 2 compost bins in my garden and am happy with how they work. But I am getting increasing numbers of slugs living in them. I take out any that crawl up the sides, but I was wondering if it would be ok to use nemotodes in the bins.
I fear that if I use the compost around the garden, I'll just be spreading slugs.
What does anyone think?

I would tend to leave them there. But watch at night and see if they set off on a forage, if so you know what to do. Cheers, Tony.

Some slugs are inevitable, I think. A slightly different query. We have a plastic compost bin, and when I remove the lid we get a cloud of white flies (may be some form of aphid, may be the dreaded 'white fly' of greenhouse fame). Are they harmful and do I need to do anything about them? I haven't encountered this problem before - in our previous, bigger, garden the compost bins were made from old wooden pallets, and the heaps were covered with carpet and tarpaulin to keep the heat in.

We get these white flys as well as the slug!! I always thought they were fruit flies and harmless, but maybe someone out there knows better than me. I just put the lid back on really quickly.

We always have large slugs and small flies in our six compost bins, especially in warm weather. I always leave them - the flies die off when it cools down and the slugs will go out with the compost when it is ready. In the meantime, no doubt both creatures assist in breaking down all the vegetation!

Thank for that. I wondered if I would be spreading slugs round the garden when I used the compost. I'm quite lucky here, there aren't too many slugs at the moment. I didn't know if there would be slug eggs or something in it as I used it.

Looking at it from another angle maybe the slugs are feasting on the stuff in the compost bin and in so doing staying away from the plants in your garden.