Slugs and Snails in the Garden

The March of the Molluscs

As we come to the end of October, eighty miles per hour winds and torrential rain makes gardening impossible, So I have to content myself with the keyboard for another weekend. The alpine house has been secured against the gales and the appropriate amount of concrete slabs placed on the cold frames to avoid any disasters.

Having told you about the plants that I grow successfully I would now like to tell you about the failures, just in case you think that everything that I plant has a happy ending.

As you will probably have guessed by the title Slugs and Snails played havoc in the garden this year, devouring everything in sight, even plants that they would normally leave alone. As I mentioned before, Hostas were the first casualty and were reduced to skeletons, followed closely by Petunias and then Asters. Everything edible was munched off at the ground. A large plant of Cardiocrinum Giganteumin which I take great pride, was munched as it appeared above the ground. In spite of numerous applications of slug pellets, the snails marched on regardless. Meconopsis Betonicifolia which is normally immune from such attack had to struggle to survive, and Daphne Retusa which occupies the same bed, had all its young leaves munched back to leave only bare stems.

Nightly patrols in the garden armed with a torch and bucked containing salt water, did little to combat the numbers, as each night they seemed to increase instead of decrease.

Sharp grit, slug pellets, aluminum sulphate, liquid slug bait, and soot were tried, but alas to no avail. Nothing would control them. On an on they marched, up the walls and into the hanging baskets to munch on the Surfinia's. Alpine plants that I thought were immune such as Androsace Vandeilii and Pyrenaica were grazed continuously and as I tried in vain to save those plants, they then popped up in the Alpine house and started on the seedlings. Lewesia Cotyledon L Rediviva, L Brachycalyx, and Lilium Formosanum - nothing was safe; if it was green it was edible.

Into the cold frame they went next. Primula seedlings were scoffed before my eyes, row after row were munched off leaving pots of bare stems.

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