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Something eating my lettuce seedlings

For 2 year's now I have had a raised bed and sown salad seedlings.  I have never had a problem with anything eating the seedlings.  This year I have sown two batches.  The first lot vanished in a day so for the next batch I planted them in a tray and waited until they were a bit bigger then put them in the bed and covered them with a net.  Now the net is loosely secured around the bottom so in a breeze it will waft about a bit.  It can't be birds as they wouldn't go near the net, it could be mice?? but whatever it is is eating the odd leaf of a plant and then moving on.  I had such a fine set of small plants image  I think I will have to secure the net around the bed but what else could it be? 

Posts

  • ObelixxObelixx Posts: 30,064

    Slugs or snails.  Get some wildlife friendly pellets and use them sparingly but regularly to protect susceptible plants sucha s vegetable seedlings, daffs, hemerocallis, clematis shoots, hostas and anything else they munch on.

    Vendée - 20kms from Atlantic coast.
    "The price good men (and women) pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men (and women)."
    Plato
  • GemmaJFGemmaJF Posts: 2,286

    I just go out after dark and move them. Sounds like there is only one or two doing the damage if they are not taking the lot down to ground level overnight. It's a bit overkill to use pellets for a couple of slugs that could be moved 40 feet and won't come back. image

  • OK thanks, I will take a look when it gets dark to see if I can see the blighters… 

  • heavens, that's all I need, slugs with a homing instinct.  

  • GemmaJFGemmaJF Posts: 2,286

    Travel miles really RB?, we are talking about slugs in a UK garden?

    Pottering girl I had lovely lettuces in the garden last year, I only moved 3 or 4 slugs all season. The lettuces were no more than 20 foot away from a wildlife garden where dozens of slug species thrive. 

    If you find loads and loads tonight, fair enough pellet them, but it's a bit of waste of money to buy pellets if it is only a couple of them doing the damage.

  • Thanks Gemma.  I will see if I can find them.  I don't like using pellets even wildlife friendly ones.  I even hand pick greenflies off my roses - and I have a lot of roses.

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