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Showing posts with label slugs. Show all posts
Showing posts with label slugs. Show all posts
Written by Jenny Catton
No-one likes to think that there may be creepy crawlies lurking in their home. And outdoor pests can be a real pain for gardeners. But next time you have an attack of flies, ants or slugs, think twice before reaching for the can of pest killer. Most commercial pest control products contain a multitude of strong chemicals that are not only bad for the environment but can be harmful to you, your family and your pets. So instead of using heavy-duty insect killers, try researching some of the more natural ways of dealing with common pests. Here are a few ideas:
Flies
There are a wide range of fly traps available which capture flies without using chemicals. Alternatively, try placingplants that actively ward off flies around your home – basil plants, eucalyptus oiland crushed mint are all reported to work.
Wasps
Wasps actually eat other insects including flies so if you spot one or two wasps in your home, don’t rush to kill them – just avoid aggravating them and they won’t sting. If you have a bigger problem, you can buy wasp traps that use water, rather than chemicals, to kill the wasps.
Slugs
Slugs can be really destructive but thankfully there are lots of natural ways to deal with them. Try placing copper barriers around plants or create a trap using beer as bait – apparently slugs love the smell of beer and will climb into the trap and drown.
For more environmentally-friendly pest-control tips, visit: www.eartheasy.com
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Ask any gardener which pest they fear the most and the answer will probably be slugs! A few slugs can ruin a healthy plant in just a few hours and are notoriously difficult to get rid of. There are of course, plenty of chemical products and slug pellets available but you might be reluctant to use these, particularly if you like to let young children help with the gardening, or if you have pets. So if you’re looking for a chemical-free way to deal with slugs, what are your options? Well, here are few ideas to try:
Create a Trap
By creating a trap using things that slugs are naturally attracted to you may be able to capture them and keep them away from your plants. You can use fruit or pet food to entice slugs to a specific area of your garden and then simply scoop them up and throw them away. Alternatively, a popular trapping method is to create a beer trap as slugs love beer! Simply dig a hole in the ground and place a bowl or cup in the hole so that the rim is roughly level with the soil. Then fill the cup three-quarters full of beer. Leave overnight and the next day you should find that the slugs have drowned in the beer.
Copper Tape
Copper tape gives slugs an electric shock so it’s ideal for wrapping around outdoor pots.
Gritty Textures
Snails love smooth surfaces so if you can make the area around your plants unpleasant for wandering slugs, they are less likely to give you bother. Grit, gravel, crushed eggshells or even coffee grounds will all create a rough texture that slugs hate.
Salt Warning
You may have heard that salt will kill slugs and whilst this is true, don’t be tempted to put salt in your garden as it will spoil the fine balance of the soil. Instead, you can use a bucket of salty water to discard your captured slugs.
Deterrent Plants
There are a number of plants which are thought to deter slugs from the garden and so you could try planting some of these and see if it keeps the slugs away. Plants that slugs are said to hate include ginger, garlic, chives and mint.
Citrus Fruits
Next time you eat an orange or grapefruit, keep hold of the peel as it makes an excellent slug trap. Half a grapefruit with the flesh removed works particularly well. Place the rind from citrus fruits on the surface of the compost around vulnerable plants and leave overnight. The slugs will be attracted to the rinds and will congregate underneath – they particularly like to hide underneath when the sun comes up. Then simply check your citrus traps and dispose of the slugs.
Night-time Manoeuvres
After dark is the time that slugs love the most so a simple but effective way to capture slugs is simply to head out at night with a torch. Take a stroll around your plants and pick off the slugs before they have chance to do too much damage.
For more advice about chemical-free gardening, visit: www.organicgardening.com
In a source of English drinking water, the levels of toxic pesticide were, last month, found to be more than 100 times over the EU limit. This record-breaking discovery of metaldehyde – a chemical used in slug pesticides – threatened the wellbeing of residents in Essex and Suffolk, as the Environment Agency and Natural England reported the pesticides were found at the River Stour, which is the source of water to homes in these counties. This isn’t an environmental wellness issue that will go away once it’s discovered. There’s currently no treatment method that can extract metaldehyde drinking water – once it’s there, you’re drinking it.
You may be surprised by this news but the truth is that we’ve seen situations like this before, and still little is being done to solve the problem. In many areas across the country this time last year, slug numbers exploded after the wet spring and summer, in similar conditions to those we’ve seen this year. It was in the autumn of 2007 that the problem was first identified, as new analytical techniques allowed experts to test for metaldehyde. Since then, the government brought in a voluntary stewardship programme with guidelines for the use of the chemical, but clearly we need a new plan.
You don’t need to be an environmental expert to work out the main source of metaldehyde in the country; slug pellets. Using them in your garden does indeed put your wellness at risk, but you may not be aware that slug pellets are used in great quantities for the purpose of growing rape seed oil, winter beans, sugar beet and brassicas such as broccoli. In fact, the National Farmers’ Union (NFU) offers a briefing on the issue, but sadly this only targets the use of this chemical, and chemical alternatives – there’s no mention of integrated pest management.
In the UK, the main predators of slugs are hedgehogs, frogs and wild birds, but microscopic predatory nematodes and carabid beetles can also be important. You’d think that the increased population of slugs would mean that we’d be seeing scores of these other animals too, but sadly we’ve seen the complete opposite. According to the People’s Trust for Endangered Species, since 2004 the number of hedgehogs has fallen by more than a third, plummeting from 36million in the 50s to fewer than one million today. This is due to a loss of hedgerows, a greater number of roads and the increased building of houses in all in areas of countryside.
These two facts together – slug poison on the rise and slug predators dying out – paints a bleak picture of our farming practices; we don’t understand our precarious environmental situation, nor do we have the research or right plan to deal with it. All advice given to farmers is geared towards the use of chemicals, rather than how they can encourage frogs, hedgehogs and wild birds. Not only would this benefit farmers, but anyone who doesn’t want slug toxins in their drinking water!
While the media is going wild over how metaldehyde in drinking water can impact human health, the water company fairly points out that you’d have to drink roughly 1,000 litres of water a day to be seriously poisoned. Nonetheless, we cannot be complacent. Drinking metaldehyde is not likely to be good for you, but it certainly isn’t good for the environment. If you won’t think of your own health or environmental wellness, think about your furry little friends; any vet will tell you gruesome horror stories of how dogs have died from eating slug pellets. Metaldehyde is threatening animals, plants and humans – in short, everything on the planet – and something needs to be done.
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