Waking up to find your salad crop decimated by slugs and snails is a soul-destroying experience for gardeners, but Love Your Weekend star Alan Titchmarsh has the answer
Slugs and snails are the bane of every gardener’s life, especially those who work hard on growing nutritious, tasty-leafed plants such as hostas, dahlias, and delphiniums. The slimy creatures have numerous natural predators, such as thrushes, blackbirds, and starlings, as well as frogs, slow worms, and hedgehogs.
But nature doesn’t quite do enough to keep the slippery customers down, and gardeners have tried a myriad of solutions to keep them away from their vegetable patches. Some have tried beer-traps, which are fairly effective but entail a grisly clearing-out job every couple of days.
Alan Titchmarsh has listed a number of other slug-taming tactics that people have attempted over the years, and he has ruled out a chemical solution.
“Like most gardeners,” he told Country Life, “I have tried just about every slug control known to man. I long ago stopped using metaldehyde-based slug pellets, which left the pests writhing in agony and the birds and the ever-rarer hedgehog facing a poisoned diet.”
He also dismisses many of the tried-and-trusted folk remedies such as crushed eggshells, holly leaves, sharp grit, gravel and sheep’s wool as “unreliable”. These methods are believed to deter snails and slugs, as they would be uncomfortable to travel across.
He added: “I do not drink enough Colombian or Arabica to carpet my hosta border in coffee grounds and, anyway, I’m not wild about imbuing my garden with an aroma redolent of Starbucks.”
Instead, Alan swears by the copper rings that can be planted around a vulnerable plant, or can be bought as an adhesive tape to protect plant pots: “They are reputed (if kept clean) to impart a kind of electric shock to any slug or snail attempting to scale their dizzying height,” he says.
When slugs or snails try to slither across the copper, their mucus reacts with the metal, causing a mild electric shock. This unpleasant sensation deters them from crossing, encouraging them to turn back and find another route.
Alan adds that slugs and snails can sometimes get around the copper barrier, if you plant your plants too close together: “Avoid placing potted hostas where their leaves can touch a nearby box bush, where snails love to shelter,” he warns.
“At night, they’ll hop across the divide and gorge themselves before returning to their customary dorm for their daytime sleep.”
He notes that, even among hostas, some varieties seem to be less vulnerable to slug attack than others: “I was thrilled to have a hosta named for me a few years ago,” he said.
“‘Alan Titchmarsh’ is a variety with rich green leaves that have a creamy yellow streak right down the centre.
“I try not to imagine that it is in any way a reflection of my character. It is, I have noticed, rarely attacked by slugs and snails. Perhaps they have some respect for the gardener after all.”