The gardening season has started, and the slugs return to our gardens. SRF compared twelve methods to fight slugs, without harming them. But the weather also influences their behavior and affects the effectiveness of wrestling methods.
Cut them into pieces, pick them up several times a day, spread anti-skin pellets: are the strategies to fight slugs in the gardens, but which work best? The SRF “Kassensturz” consumption emission, in collaboration with the Hünibach horticultural school, compared twelve methods that repel them without killing them.
Homemade tips, but also specialized devices available in businesses have been tested as anti-plum necklaces in different materials, a copper fence or a sheep wool woolen slug brake. Cost of protections: between a little more than a franc and almost seven francs per plant. Homemade tips like ashes, sawdust or a homemade anti-cloth necklace from an old pot of yogurt are much cheaper.
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-Slugs are difficult to trap
The Biologist Bernhard Speiser has done research on slugs and biological measures to counter these viscous visitors to the gardens. He believes that anti-snipers are effective: “Many slugs will not bother to cross them. Or they do not realize that an interesting plant is hidden behind”, explains the expert of the Institute for the Research of Organic Agriculture. However, necklaces are not 100%sure, because slugs have an excellent smell and can overcome almost any obstacles. In addition, small slugs often live in the ground and can bypass the barriers by passing underground. Even large slugs can sneak through tiny cracks in the ground.
The slugs do not like drought at all, because they need their aqueous mucus to move, adds Bernhard Speiser: “When they move, they lose water. And when they have no more water, they stop – like a car without essence.” This explains why dry products to spread like sawdust work well – as long as it is not raining. On the other hand, obstacles to edges or pointed do not affect them: “The slugs can even crawl on razor blades – thanks to their mucus and their flexible foot which can deviate,” explains the expert.
Results on the field
For experience, Katrin Morina, head of test at the Hünibach horticultural school, used broccoli, cabbage and salad plants as bait. She then released 100 slugs. A double fence kept them in the field and protected them. Every day, the expert evaluated the damage caused by the slugs on each plant. She observed that the slugs were not distributed uniformly in the field of experimentation: “in great wind, they take refuge in the most sheltered corner of the flowerbed,” explains Katrin Morina. On sunny days, on the other hand, slugs have often hidden under sheep wool. As the slugs often eat near their place of rest, this means more pressure on plants nearby.
In this experience, Miscanthus’ shavings have the least well protected the plants. Most other methods have partially prevented the damage caused by slugs.
Three methods of protection against the slugs have distinguished themselves: the apfelkist salad ring, the stop-limaces with Andermatt Biogarten cap and the sawdust remedy. The sawdust benefited from dry time. In case of rain, it would probably have worked less well. Finally, experience shows that the microclimate and weather conditions influence slugs – and therefore the effectiveness of a method of struggle.
Felicity Flohr (SRF)
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