Organic Gardens & Slug Control In The Vegetable Plot
In Organic gardening , just as in any garden, it’s extremely disheartening to find your newly planted brassicas have been chewed in the night by slugs and its easy to reach for the slug pellets, but you could do more to cut the slug population in your garden yourself. After all, slug pellets aren’t the best things for you to eat, and just when the slugs are most active (in wet weather) the pellets are least effective. Slug pellets can also kill some of the most beneficial insects and beetles. Birds and animals eating the dead slugs littered on the surface could also be harmed if you don’t remove them quickly.
The Garden Slug which is a burrower and surface feeder will eat roots and sever plants at the bottom of the stem while the Keel slug lives underground and attacks roots and potatoes. The huge long slugs that you see do very little damage to your vegetables as they live on rotting vegetation and fungi etc.
If you don’t like to use slug pellets but prefer to practice some type of Organic gardening pest control then there’s a range of things you can do to cut the slug populations in your garden.
Good cultivation of the soil in spring exposes the slugs and their eggs to various predators, but if you practice a no dig style of cultivation, then keep the weeds down, because they are additionally a food source for slugs.
Beer and milk traps are valuable but you should set the tin into the ground keeping the rim about 1.5cm above ground level to prevent helpful beetles etc from dropping in. You need to set the tins about one metre apart in a grid format.
Slug collecting at night is very successful in drastically reducing the population in your garden. On a warm dampish evening you leave the house with a torch and a cane with a lengthy darning needle stuck in one end. Stick the slugs where you spot them and drop them into a container of salt. Sounds disgusting, I know, but very much worth the effort. You may get the maximum slugs this way.
You can multiply the number of beneficial insects that hunt on slugs by placing small wooden boards or roofing tiles between rows as shelter for predatory beetles and insects. Slugs will also be attracted, and these you can easily remove along with their eggs.
If all this seems a little too ‘hands on’ then I suggest you think about a commercial type of Organic gardening pest control in the form of microscopic worms known as Nematode worms.
A natural parasite of the slug, these nematodes (or to give them their proper plural, nematoda) are naturally present in their millions in all well balanced garden soil. Nematode worms infest the slug by laying their eggs inside its body, so killing the slug during the Nematodes’ reproductive cycle. The Nematode worms, when applied to the garden, boost the natural population of Nematode worms in your patch, providing increased natural Organic gardening pest control.
You apply the Nematoda by watering can or by Superspray type garden feeder attached to a hosepipe for larger areas. Once you cease applications the population of Nematode worms will fall to its original numbers.
You should enjoy up to 6 weeks long lasting control from one application, and Nematode worms are safe for children pets and wildlife. They’re safe for use on food plants and aren’t adversely affected by rain.
Organic Garden Snail & Slug Control in the Organic gardens vegetable plot is all about holding the slug population at an absolute minimum and so maximising your return on your vegetable yield.