Monty Don shares ways to stop slugs eating young plants

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Mark Lane presents the BBC’s Gardeners’ World, as well as BBC Morning Live. He is a passionate advocate for using natural methods to eliminate slugs from the garden.

“With regard to slug pellets,” Mark said, “please, please, please do not buy them.”

Mark recently shared a trick to kill slugs involving cheap lager.

Slug pellets may kill slugs, but they also pose a risk to pets, children, and even adults.

They will also cause harm to birds, toads, and other garden wildlife who are natural predators to slugs.

Pellets contain various different types of poisons, all of which not only impact snails but other creatures in the garden and creatures who eat slugs.

Mark said: “It’s really really nasty.

“I think we use over 650 million a year. Please read the labels and make sure you’ve got the ones that are wildlife, pets, and children.”

There are some organic pellet solutions, Ferric Phosphate or Iron III phosphate.

However, gardeners are still urged to use them sparingly.

There are other, more natural ways to deal with slugs.

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This includes encouraging slug-eating birds into your garden with bird feeders.

Gardeners can also use beer to attract and kill slugs.

Mark warned gardeners not to give up on natural ways to get rid of slugs, as it can be a slow process getting through all the slugs in your garden.

He explained the slugs gardeners see in their gardens represent just 10 percent of slugs.

A large number of slugs will live most of their lives in the soil.

However, Mark said you will start to see more slugs come to the surface when you start to get rid of slugs.

He said: “You will start to see more come to the surface.

“You’re getting rid of 10 percent and then more will come and you’ll be getting rid of those.”

Mark also described to Express.co.uk a garden must-have to keen weeds down.

Mark recommends “a five centimetre layer of normally organic matter” called mulch on your flowerbed.

He went on: “The best things for mulch are wooden bark, homemade compost – if it’s really well-rotted – and a thing called leaf mould, which you make by collecting your own leaves in a compost box.

“Now the whole idea about putting a thick layer of that down is basically stopping the light to the soil, which means that any other weeds that might still be in the soil can’t grow because they’ve got no light that they can get to.”

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