Kitchen Garden Forum

I am having a terrible time with slugs. I have used a 3 x treetment of Nemaslug, have beer traps out, I am putting gravel & egg shells around young plants + I am picking off & squashing at least 30 per night at the moment. Becuase of this I have lost 2 rows of sprouts, lost the first two batches of runner & french beans and now have 4 plants struggling. No carrots or chard have come up and lettuces I planted out decimated overnight. I am afraid to put out any more lettuce or the = 2 rows of brocolli I have that are overdue for planting out. The pease are on the third sowing plant out and equally they keep been destroyed. I have regular visits from blackbirds, although the thrushs seem to have gone now. Is there anything else I can do? & what can I plant out? We were hoping to be self sufficient in veg by now, as did quite well last year.

I did not plant leak seeds early enough, so will try and buy some plants.
Any ideas? I have just dug the potatoes and are quite lucky there, dug early becuase I was worried about blight, but have about 3kg from 5 plants, so happy with that. But now I have a lovely dug over patch and an almost derilect veg patch, just the corner of beans left. Any ideas from you experienced gardeners please!

What about winter brassicas? It's too late to sow sprouts and winter caulis but you might get away with sowing early sprouting broccoli (for next spring) and certainly spring cabage (Early Durham, Mastergreen are good varieties). In all cases I would plant them in cells, roottrainers, toilet rolls or whatever, but make sure that they are good strong plants before planting them out into the slug-ridden plot. If you are not growing dozens and dozens of them, you might even try to wrap each stem in aluminium foil to keep the slugs off. You might also still find some brassica plants in a garden centre.

You could also try chicory & endive. Also fennell is good, especially if you can give it a bit fleece cover later on - i was still picking it at Christmas last year.
Vivien

Thank you both. I do have brocolli, that I am scared to plant out! I will look out for some of the otehr suggestions to. Fennel sounds interesting and Ive not tried endive before. Thanks also for the slug prevention ideas, well worth trying! I will post later on and let you know how it went. Thank you

Then don't forget to keep some ground free for your autumn broad beans, you can also sow some late salad leaves or lettuce, have just sown some spinach also for baby leaves............

Yoy may get away with beetroot and swede from seed if you are quick and have a mild climate

Compo

Have you thought about putting a small pond in a corner of your plot? Hopefully you'll then get frogs to help you with your slug problem.

Funny, Chantel, we were only looking at them at the garden centre yesterday! We were going to have a homebuilt pond, then changed our minds. But, have started thinking about it again, so, I think your comments have swung it in favour. Thank you!

That's good news! I'm planning a little pond for my allotment as I've yet to see a frog or toad on there. I am however very short of slugs too (sorry) so I hope there's enough for them to eat. I hope yours works well.

and of course you can plant some garlic in November!

Well Chantel, I can always send you some slugs? Free of course!

I will post on here how we get on, so you know!

George, Yes, I had a bumper crop of garlic and intend to plant plenty again - thank you.