As the UK heads into autumn, gardeners are being urged to take action to protect their plants from an expected surge in slugs and snails – and coffee is the key
UK gardeners are being encouraged to prepare for the wet autumn weather before October arrives.
After a summer characterised by scorching drought conditions and scarce rainfall, maintaining a thriving garden was a challenge, especially with hosepipe bans making watering even more difficult.
However, the hot weather did have one advantage – it reduced the damage caused by slugs and snails. Despite these hungry molluscs still being active at night, fewer rainy days meant less of them munching on your precious fruits and vegetables.
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Sadly, this respite won’t last. With October starting on Wednesday, cooler weather and increased rainfall are expected to usher in a boom in ‘slug and snail season’.
As the weather becomes wetter and the nights draw in, slugs and snails will find ideal conditions to spread throughout your garden and, even worse, lay their eggs for next year, reports the Express.
Slugs will mate and lay eggs throughout the autumn, creating even more slugs and snails for the following year. But fear not, gardeners are sharing a top tip to control and repel slug populations before they get out of hand – instant coffee.
Cheap coffee grounds aren’t just a way to kick-start your morning routine, they can also give everything growing in your garden a boost. Caffeine is toxic to slugs and snails, and some gardening experts swear by it as a method of pest control.
Word of caution, though, coffee is an extremely agonising method for slugs to perish, far worse than salt, so don’t scatter coffee grounds directly onto any slugs or snails (crushing them would be much swifter and less barbaric).
Instead simply scatter the coffee grounds onto earth and around raised beds or containers during dry, bright weather, and then when it does pour, the slugs won’t venture across the coffee, thus safeguarding your treasured blooms and vegetables.
In research, coffee grounds were discovered to cut slug and snail populations by between 50 and 90 per cent. The coffee won’t cause any damaging effects on your plants either, in fact some research has discovered that caffeine actually enhances plant development.
Gardening blog Tea and Coffee explains: “Coffee grounds contain a chemical called alkaloid, which is poisonous to slugs. When slugs ingest coffee grounds, they suffer from severe dehydration and eventually die.
“For these reasons, slugs will avoid areas where coffee grounds have been sprinkled. While coffee grounds may not be the most effective way to keep slugs out of your garden, they can be a helpful tool in deterring these pests.”
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