Slug Wars

So what did you do over the summer solstice and the long days surrounding it? It's the time of year when I try to ensure that the vegetable patch is fully set, leaving the second half of summer to enjoy its returns as well as the delights of the rest of the garden. This year, I also went to war.

Not in the conventional sense, although for a moment Mr Trump had us all rather concerned on that issue. Instead it was an enraged onslaught against the seemingly increasing slug population in the garden.

Obviously I did my research first. Then alarmed by the statistic that a garden can host 200 slugs per square metre, roused myself to defend the immature plants that I was transplanting from the greenhouse. 

Over the years, I have tried all kinds of tricks but does anything genuinely work, especially when those darned things reproduce asexually and apparently up their reproduction when vast numbers fall on the sword of the combatant gardener? Scared by the knowledge that the rain would be returning (slugs like ducks love the wet) and my kindergarten vegetables were delicate to say the least, I had to consider the weapons at my disposal.

It seemed that, unless I wanted a baby boomer generation of gastropods, my method had to be chosen carefully. The trouble is that ultimately every technique from slug pellets certified for use in the organic garden, beer traps or encouraging natural predators such as birds, hedgehogs and frogs would presumably result in a decrease in numbers followed by a sudden and dramatic increase. Clearly there was going to have to be a very clear strategy if my military style tactics were to work.

I pondered the issue whilst constructing cages from fine netting to protect the most vulnerable plants from egg laying butterflies and birds. I know it has to  be an accident of eyesight but why oh why do blackbirds insist on mistaking my leeks for worms? Seriously, do they honestly believe that green grubs would suddenly present themselves vertically and spaced out in line at regular intervals, purely for their delectation?

Mister E (still putting the final touches to the bathroom project) wandered out and muttered something about me turning my vegetable plot into an apparent campsite. That's when the obvious answer materialised: he could lie out under the stars, keep watch and when the advancing army of slugs approached throw them into the neighbouring field. Strangely, he was not impressed by the suggestion and instead commandeered me to hold a pencil for him whilst he wrestled with a shower attachment.

In previous years I have applied calcified seaweed or crushed shells around the base of tender plants but heavy rain tends to scatter or bury them and with thunder storms forecast for today that remedy seemed rather pointless as did those perfumed concoctions that last a fortnight unless it rains.  So instead I have gone for the fortress approach; bastions of empty plastic bottles and sheeting forming fortresses around the most susceptible shoots and instead of boiling oil pouring from the battlements, copper tape affixed there instead. 

Of course there'll always be a cohort of slugs that will outflank the buffers so erected, perhaps tunnelling under or alternatively squeezing through or over a weak point in the fortifications. Hopefully, if my perma-culture works, they'll get picked off by the blackbirds deprived of their sustenance in the leek trench and, without the smelling rotten corpses surrounded by slimy mucus to give away their demise, no obvious trigger for a proliferation in breeding.

Fingers crossed.