All my lovely herbs that I have sown from seed have disappeared.
All that remains is stalks!!! I know its slugs, but I cant find them and the herbs are on the top shelf in the greenhouse.
What can I do to stop this happening?
beer traps or pellets ,copper rings ,egg shel , gravell chippings there is loads of options im still trying different ones anything sharp they dont like
I actually found the little sods just under the surface of the soil in the pots in my greenhouse, munching merrily on my cucumber plants and as for the melons - they are no longer. :( I've now put an old baking tray just under the greenhouse with pellets in which they seem to head for before marching on for the plants as which point they turn to mush - yay! ;D
beer traps
Salt
mrf94
Quote from: springbokgirlie on June 09, 2008, 08:30:10
All my lovely herbs that I have sown from seed have disappeared.
All that remains is stalks!!! I know its slugs, but I cant find them and the herbs are on the top shelf in the greenhouse.
What can I do to stop this happening?
How do you know its slugs Springbok, have they left a trail of slime.
we've had the middle bitten out of 2 of our peppers in the greenhouse, I suspect mice as there's no trail and the leaves aren't holed at all :(
I often wonder about woodlice and seedlings!
Copied from a posting i made last night..........................
Here goes with my TOP SECRETS.
I sometimes use cut up pop bottle as rings, coated in vaseline and wrapped with copper thread. The Copper thread is an ordinary copper kitchen scourer, which can be unravelled like knitting and loosely wrapped around the rings. In all my grow bags (saddle bag style) i just leave a pile of unravelled copper scourer round the base of each plant. NO SLUGS............................................. BUT DONT TELL EVERYONE, I may be sued by slug pellet co's.
If you've a plastic greenhouse look under the plastic joints that hold the frame together, they're really clever at hiding there
get a torch and do the rounds twice a night is one of the best methods,
another is to use sacrifical plants, find out what your slugs (in our case snails) like, grow a few in small pots and place them at the ends of your staging
Are you absolutely certain its slugs? To have seedlings mown off like you describe is more characteristic of mice, at least from our experience.
valmarg
Quote from: davyw1 on June 09, 2008, 22:04:51
Quote from: springbokgirlie on June 09, 2008, 08:30:10
All my lovely herbs that I have sown from seed have disappeared.
All that remains is stalks!!! I know its slugs, but I cant find them and the herbs are on the top shelf in the greenhouse.
What can I do to stop this happening?
How do you know its slugs Springbok, have they left a trail of slime.
Yep slime all over the glass in the greenhouse too. Which is glass by the way :)
A pot on it's side with some porridge oats in , they can't resist, it dessicates them, they can't make a slime trail to get out again! replace daily. (only need a couple of tablespoons full each day) good luck! ;)
I have heard that bran works as well, they fill up on it and
EXPLODE! Mwah hah hah hah
I realise this isn't going to help much now they've got in, but I put copper adhesive tape all round the window in my potting shed so that when the auto vent opened, they wouldn't just slither in. (you can get it from organic gardening catalogue)
Meanwhile, putting slug pellets about the greenhouse inside plant pot saucers works quite well even if you're a desperate organic grower. That way they aren't in contact with any soil, and pretty much the slugs which crawl in to eat them never crawl out again. I don't use them on bare soil because of the effect they can have on the ecosystem if the metaldehyde washes in, but inside a covered gh/cold frame in trays etc should be safe in an emergency as long as you don't leave the door open or have a resident frog.
moonbells