Gardening expert details natural ways to deal with slugs
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Gardening expert Adam Pasco has shared his “natural” tips for removing slugs and snails from your garden. Adam explained how trap and kill the country’s “number one pest” using chemical-free free methods and household items. The horticulturalist shared his advice in a video for B&Q in 2015.
Adam said: “We all want to have a beautiful garden but one thing that you’ll be sharing your garden with so often are pests.
“It’s nice to look at the different ways which you can control pests naturally without resorting to harmful chemicals.
“The number one pest in this country is the slug – slugs and snails.”
Adam said slugs and snails “love” eating young shoots which can kill off your plants before they’ve even begun.
He continued: “They love tender new shoots and if they eat them away then you won’t get any plants at all.
“You can use barrier products like this to actually make a complete circle around tender plants in your garden.
“If you put this around the plants early in the season just as they’re poking through the soil, this stops the slugs and snails crawling over the soil surface and reaching the plants to protect them from attack.
“Or get yourself some old plastic bottles, cut off the bottom and you can pop these over young plants and seedlings.
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“Keep birds away and creates a little mini cloche to help the plants grow more quickly and keeps the pests away too.”
Adam said another way to protect your plants is by cutting up your old compost bags.
You can cut them open and try lying them down onto the soil surface, lawns or borders.
The bags can be secured with stones if there’s windy weather.
If you leave the bags overnight and then peel them back in the morning, you will see slugs trapped underneath.
The gardening pro added: “When you catch them, just put them into a jam jar filled with salty water and that will kill them.
“We can put the top on and pop them in the dustbin.”
The most thrifty option Adam recommended using is old jam jars and yoghurt pots which most Britons will pop in the recycling bin on a weekly basis.
He said: “Another thing you can do in your borders, around your delicate plants, on your veg plot, anywhere you like, just dig a hole, sink a jam jar or a plastic yoghurt pot or something into the ground so the rim of the pots is level with the soil surface and top that up with a good, bitter beer.
“This acts as a slug trap, what you’ll find is they’re attracted to the smell of the beer they will crawl along, go and have a nice drink and die happy drowned in the alcohol below.
“When you find some slugs in there, again, you can literally put the top on and just throw that away in the dustbin.
“Do also check each day because you can find that little beetles and some of the nice insects in the garden can crawl in there so just hook them out and save them.
“Otherwise, it’s a good way of controlling slugs naturally.”
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