. I have tried moats, various nematodes, pots on stools, even midnight torch excursions

==>>>> well.. perhaps if you tried the VERY ACTIVE hosta forum.. you would find out all about 10% vinegar or ammonia sprays to dealing with such.. including full fall cleanup ...

including ... i believe. a FAQ on such ...

its a year long battle....

ken

OMG! Don't get me started about my leopard slugs. They are picky eaters and prefer flower buds to my hosta. My president clematis has nothing but center poms to show for his large blooms (they love the buds and chew them down). My thrift cant bloom because they eat the buds off. I lost atleast a dozen peony buds, and my daylillies look like a weedwacker hit them.
I'm all steamed up today after I realize they had eaten a whole long line of sunflower seedlings while ignoring every weed in their travels. Grrr. They mowed off all my melons seedlings too. I put out saucers of beer and caught some of them, but I liberally apply Sluggo and it seems to move them elsewhere, but so far I haven't been able to eradicate them either.

Yep - have just had to do another sowing of curcubits because I left the covers off the trays in the greenhouse - a couple of snails romped through the whole lot in 1 night - swines.

They don't seem to be such a problem as they are for us, Campanula. I've posted this picture before when people have said, 'Oh they won't cross egg shells,' or 'They don't like coffee'. These are people who do not truly know the gastropod. My one and only Hosta last year, on top of a 3 foot chimney pot, surrounded by eggshells. This year also surrounded by slug pellets, I'm afraid.

Uhoh...was going to suggest crushed egg shells. Haha, Flora. Sorry about your lovely hosta.

Beer definitely works, but you may end up attracting every snail/slug in the vicinity. Fill a small tin (tuna cans work fine) with cheap beer and bury it near ground level (burt then fill, actually). The slugs crawl in an drown. Toss them in the morning.

I have also used the slug/snail bait that is safe for pets.

Good luck. Nothing worse than a chewed- up hosta.

Oh and yes, do join everyone at the Hosta Forum. It can be a dangerous path leading to addiction, but wow, it is so worth it!

hmmm Something tells me Camp won't be going to the hosta forum........ what could it be??

Actually, I've got lots of slugs, and they are the nemesis of my seedlings. However, they are controlled pretty well with the organic slug bait made with iron phosphate. There are numerous brands at this point, but Gardens Alive had the first product - Escargo. Also Sluggo, Slug Magic, etc. These pellets are safe for wildlife, pets, other insects, toads, etc.

I put a light sprinkle around each and every seedling, if I want to be assured to see them grow up, because otherwise slugs can wipe them out in an evening.

For the hostas and other larger plants that are slug favorites, I use the ammonia solution in a spray bottle, that was recommended on the Hosta forum. Works great!

So Ken does white vinegar solution work equally well as the ammonia?

'They don't seem to be such a problem as they are for us'...

And here I thought I lived in the slug capitol of the world ;) I bait about 11 months out of 12 (sometimes skipping January) and can keep damage to a minimum. Commercial slug bait in the rain resistant pellets, combined with some night time flashlight forays armed with a spray bottle of household ammonia and water mix....I can keep control, but never eliminate them. They would laugh at eggshells, coffee grounds, copper tape, any of the more innovative suggestions, and I won't deal with the mess of beer traps, which the deer would probably just drink from anyway.

I find organic slug bait to work very well too but it must be applied after rain and it can get expensive.

Move here.

We have a few slugs, but they really aren't that big a deal. Sometimes I remember to put out slug bait and if I do, my few hostas survive the summer with almost no damage. If I don't remember, they get chomped to some degree, but not enough to bother me. Usually the damage doesn't occur until mid-summer and by them I don't care that much about the hosta. Nothing else seems bothered by the slugs. To my knowledge the only snails we have are like maybe a 1/4 inch. I've never seen one. I've only read about them.

I've always wondered how you folks over there deal with these nasties. It seems like a nightmare situation.

Kevin

hmmm, that figures, Kevin - when we get a really hard winter, the snail population definitely decreases.
Oh Lola,
'Something tells me Camp won't be going to the hosta forum'

Could that be because of the 'year long battle.... '

umm, no. LOL. Really I can put a link to clear it up, but why? Just taking the mick.

I eagerly await BBC news reports of drunken deer carousing the streets of Cambridge as campanula buries buckets of beer.

flora_uk - that picture just breaks my heart.

Like Kevin, it looks as though I lucked out in the location, location, location equation since even though I have more than 50 hostas (the bulk of which are 'designer' hostas--i.e., named cultivars), serving various purposes throughout the garden, a very few are bothered and I always sprinkle crushed egg shells around the plants as they emerge in spring. That seems to eliminate the problem, or at least it has the past 8 years.

I have one bed in particular... well, two actually... that are pretty much hosta beds--one in full shade and the other under my crabapple tree so that's part-shade. For some reason the plants in the full shade bed have grown considerably larger this year than in past years which bugs me because I only allotted them a certain amount of space & they aren't supposed to grow that large.

Here's the full shade bed north of my garage. Hosta bed is to the right of the path.
{{gwi:196300}}

One common leopard slug, certainly in my yard, can wipe out a coleus or hosta in an evening. They are huge.

I wonder if the UK has leopard slugs? What about banana slugs? I listen to the BBC on public radio; I'm sure it would have made the news.
the pictures I've seen of banana slugs made me queasy.
idabean

Not much hostas here so the slugs chomp on the ligularia. I read somewhere that slug don't like astrantia so I used that as an excuse to buy a bunch of astrantia. Lets see if that actually works.

Morz8 - sounds like it's the similar climates which mean we share a slug plague.

Don't let Ken see this, but I don't actually mind that much not being able to grow lots of Hosta. I've looked at the Hosta forum and it seems like a form of OCD rather than gardening ;-) I just don't like the look of a garden full of one type of plant, however many nuances of shape, size and variegation.

What does really annoy me is slugs and snailsr habit of eating of the spring bulb flowers just as they are about to open, of eating the emerging clematis shoots, of then climbing the vines to eat the flowers and of mowing down emerging vegetables on the allotment.

Here's another horror picture. The harvest of beans and snails took 5 minutes. The snails climb the bean poles and snooze there until night when they come down and eat anything juicy.

That looks like a nice meal. A little garlic butter and you're set to go.

Kevin

Kevin - eeeeewwwwwwww!

flora, I too have MAJOR slug and snail issues (also live in reasonable proximity to Morz8, so we share that mild, damp maritime climate).

The slugs I can deal with more easily. They respond to bait very well and I also do twilight forays with the salt shaker. OTOH, the snails are far more acrobatic, climbing to places the slugs only dream of, devour a much wider range of plants and scoff at bait. And they are much better at hiding.

Your collection of snails looks all too familiar :-) I find they can be pitched pretty nicely, though - I heave them into the road or my neighbor's gravel driveway. Can't do that as handily with slugs :-(

ps. you should see what the buggers did overnight to my purple brugmansia that was the centerpiece of a seasonal container planting. It looks like swiss cheese and the flowerbuds have been devoured!!

Buy a container of SLUGGO. It's an organic pellet made from iron phosphate in a starchy base. Sprinkle under leaves on the ground and all around the border of your garden. Bye-bye slugs.

I don't buy the Sluggo with spinosad added because spinosad, altho they say it's organic, kills all kinds of soil critters.

Plain Sluggo works.

This spring I pulled out the hostas as I am just tired of the battle. Every year I start out being diligent about the Sluggo, but in the end I have holey leaves. I'll try heucheras instead as snails and slugs don't seem to like them.

A slightly happier picture from this year - only a few holes. Sorry, but I finally resorted to slug pellets.

BTW, Astrantia is not a slug/snail favourite but it isn't completely immune, at least not in my garden.

Ferns are wonderful, being gastropod-proof. Might put some pics on Aachenelf's fern post later.

Here is a link that might be useful: Fern post

I see you are also a fan of Welsh poppies, Flora. They seed around like mad (as much as the peach-leafed bellflowers (campanula persicifolia) yet are always completely welcome. I do not love the double reds but have been sowing seeds from a rather good deep orange. Hope to have them all over my woods (especially since the fugitive blue meconops are a pipe-dream).

I'm a fan of anything which grows itself, doesn't mind dry shade and goes with my preferred lush disarray style of 'design'. I love self sowers. Much of my gardening involves removing rather than planting.

I swear to you beer cans and melon rinds (canteloupe, watermelon, honeydew, etc) work wonders for me. I think the trick with the slugs is to bait them with something they like even more. Take an empty can of beer (leave a few drops left in it for them) or a melon rind and leave it in the garden overnight. In the morning it will be covered with slugs and snails. Just pick it up and toss it in the garbage.

While weeding this spring, I found quite a few snails hiding under foliage and rocks. Smashed them between two rocks. So satisfying.

perennialfan273 - I do use beer traps. Yes, they attract and drown slugs and snails. But the sheer quantity of gastropods here means such methods only scratch the surface of the problem. You need a veritable arsenal of tricks all going at once.

Why not use copper tape on things in pots/containers. You can see videos on youtube. If the tape is not that wide then you should double up as the bigger ones can be determined.

Some people go as far using a battery to create a mini electric fence on containers to try them.

No you aren't alone! Slugs and snails take over the yards here especially in spring( here being Portland, OR). I stopped bothering with the "natural" solutions bc it was like trying to take out an army with a slingshot. I use sluggo (iron sulfate) it's the only thing that works that I can stay on top of. Luckily we had a super dry spring and summer so for the first time in years the slugs didnt eat all of my pole bean seedlings :) but even with that, my hostas have a few small holes as I haven't been on top of it. I only have a light green thumb though!