J. is a serious gardener, and she grows the best tomatoes I’ve eaten since I moved to the U.K. I don’t know how she kills slugs and snails on her patch in the spring, but I know she does, because if you’re going to grow anything around here, you have to. Otherwise they mow down every plant you stick in the earth. They move through like a scene from Slug Apocalypse, leaving nothing behind.
Irrelevant Photo: The North Cornwall Coast
A couple of us were at J.’s house and we went outside to admire the garden. It was that beautiful time of the evening when the sky’s a tissue-paper blue and you can almost convince yourself that the world is at peace, even though, yeah, of course you know better. Even though it was late in the year, she still had some flowers in bloom.
On the edge of a flower bed was a slug. The big, creepy kind, easily the length of my ring finger.
J. flicked it away—and I’d have to say she did it gently—with the toe of her shoe.
“That’s why I don’t come out at this time of day,” she said.
So it’s not just me. Everyone who gardens knows they’re out there. And at least for part of the year, we don’t look. If we did, as surely as if we’d sworn an oath, we’d have to kill them. And really, you can’t dedicate your life to eliminating an entire species, even if it’s only from a small patch of ground you call your own.
Notes from the U.K. 
I just can’t stand slugs, urgghhhh
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I’m still trying to find someone who can. They really do seem to set us off, don’t they?
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urgh i am shivvering right now, we had one that ate our dog food and it ended up as big as my hand omg was purely just disguuuusting x
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I left some cat food out for a neighborhood cat who wasn’t getting fed, and every morning I’d find what she hadn’t eaten crawling with slugs. Urgh indeed.
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oooer yuk!!! I am glad i had lunch already x
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Sorry about that. I could’ve just kept it to myself.
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hah yes but no fun inthat
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Snap, I just posted something about slugs and caterpillars (and all the other pests that plants attract).
I’m new to gardening (first outdoor space – doesn’t really qualify as a garden) and I did not realise just how much slugs etc eat! It’s never ending! I have to admit you’re far more gentle and tolerant than I am. If I could buy a slug bazooka and get them all off my roof, I would ;) Little buggers keep coming back though.
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Yeah, that’s the problem. Even if you get your patch of ground slug-free, you pass the patch next door and there they are: slugs. At a certain point (switching here from the generic “you” to my own twisted self) I have to admit that I can’t clear the entire world of them–and that if I could it would, somehow or other, turn out to be a bad thing.
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Ugh. I’m going to complain less about voles in future….at least they aren’t slimy.
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Oh, I don’t know. A good complaint helps pass the time while you’re pulling weeds.
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I throw them onto the path and hope that the magpies will enjoy them! For some reason they really love my worm farm……
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The worms probably taste better.
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Hm, I don’t think I can easily get convinced to start gardening. Not my thing, and even less so after reading this post. ;-)
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Oh, yes. It looks so tempting when you see someone else’s gorgeous garden and think they just sort of stay like that, all on their own.
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Not that tempting to me, don’t even attempt to mow the grass, let hubby do it if he enjoys it.
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That sounds fair.
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I use a neem spray that kind of helps. A master gardener once told me that she made it a game every night to go out with a little flash light and pick up the snails from her garden.
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The problem with picking the snails up is what you do with them next. Basically, you massacre them. It’s horrible. And I do it in the spring, otherwise I wouldn’t have a green shoot in the garden. But it really is disgusting.
I’m not sure what neem spray is or whether it’s available here. I’ll ask around.
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Ouch! Neem is a trees that grows in the Indian subcontinent and neem oil is a natural pesticide. You can spray it on the leaves.
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Sounds a lot better than what I’ve been doing. I’ll see if I can find some here.
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