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Raised bed and breeding my own slugs!!
* Red Dahlia *
Posts: 694
Every night I take out the dog I spy sooooo many baby slugs on my raised bed! So can I introduce natural besties to eat them? Nema something's??
or do I just lace it in slug pellets???
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Nemaslug. Do it quickly before the soil temp drops below 5 degrees C.
Try a small dish or yoghurt pot of beer. They drown in it. I caught 30 in 1 night in one.
Hedgehogs - that's why we need to encourage hedgehogs - they just hoover the small slugs up. But I know if you've not got hedgehogs around that's a long term project - of course frogs and toads also eat those little slugs that come out at night and glisten in the torchlight - and robins and blackbirds poke around my veg patch at dawn - I presume that's what they're having for breakfast too.
However, if you've got more than will feed your wildlife population at the moment, then yes Nemaslug in the spring - just as the soil warms up and they're getting active again - you'll get far more of them if you do it then.
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
Lol Verdun - is Dove's hog wearing a pinny?
No chance of hedgehogs as my garden is built up and the raised bed is 20" tall so unless anyone knows of hedgehogs on stilts that won't help. I may put traps on and then these nema things in spring.
do share, what are they how do they work, are they expensive. Are there any cons?
Put a ramp up the side of the raised bed, hedgehogs will use them readily.
Is this who you saw Verdun?
Sorry Red Dahlia
By the way, yes they will use ramps - ours use them to get up onto the Shady Bank which is two sleepers on their edges tall.
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
Sad but they can't get in or out so no chance and the garden isn't big enough to introduce one. The dog would love a spikey friend!!