Kitchen Garden Forum

Is it just my patch or are there fewer slugs and snails about this year? I'm not complaining mind you, just curious. Perhaps it was the cold winter?
John N

I'm guessing that like a lot of us, you haven't had much proper rain recently - if previous years are anything to go by, the slugs and snails will suddenly appear in huge numbers when things finally turn wet again!

That said, I did find a baby slug yesterday. Let's just say that I won't be letting my OH wash the lettuce again in a hurry. There's nothing like a bit of wildlife crawling on your plate to put you right off a meal!

Hello John,You and The Mouse are lucky,here in my part of Beds my neighbours and I have had our fair share of the Little Buggers over the last three weeks. We have had some rain and a little humidity which might account for this.

We have had lots of rain here but a complete absence of slugs, also no green fly on roses stawbs & Black fly on broad beans. It must be the cold winter

Where are you gloworm? - I'll move there.

We're still snided out with the damned things despite having lots of frogs and hedgehogs.

We do have a huge biscuit coloured hedgehog which does a fantastic job. I noticed it last year and it must be the same one as I've never seen one so large or so light coloured. I watched it the other night and it bites off the foot of the slug and then sucks out the insides (sorry to be gory) and in the morning there are lots of boat shaped slug skins lying around the garden. It also does huge poos so fertilizes the garden at the same time.

I'm in south cheshire

Another pest thankfully in short supply here is cabbage whites

I too have noticed that I've hardly had any slug damage on the allotment this year, also no blackfly (fingers crossed!).

We were fine until we had some rain, then the slime brigade on the allotment came out in force. The buggers scoffed half a row of newly planted out brassicas! Fortunately, we had some spares to replace them....this time we used slug pellets, sparingly.....one pellet next to each plant. So far so good.
Cheers.

Far fewer slugs and snails. I blame the drier weather as we have a marshy field next door: they must be zillions there..

Yes, there is less slug damage on our plot.

However I was struck this morning by the sight of an apple tree covered in small apples - and lots of small snails! They must have had quite a climb as they were right out on the far limbs of the tree - never seen this before.

As I was picking strawberries yesterday - a large frog hopped out - I told him/her to hop back in and protect my strawberries and it did.