She then rated the damage visually and useda leaf area meter for the first time,to record the damage in every square cm of the leaves. I invested in some adhesive copper strips (before reading this post) and conducted my own test this morning – with dew all over the copper strip. People and inverts are different 😉 the copper pipe that gives us safe tap water will wipe out the invertebrates in my aquarium.

I tried it a couple of days ago on my planters and there you go…slugs were in my planter the next day eating my green pepper seedlings!But wool pellets and pine bark did have one clear benefit: by acting as a fertiliser and mulch, they helped lettuces yield a 50% bigger crop. Copper treatments are used for fish because the copper kills invert parasites and doesn’t harm fish in lower doses, but it can wipe out reef tanks or desirable fresh water inverts, like snails. Hayley grew 108 lettuces in a series of nine patio pots and nine raised beds and monitored them for six weeks. Use this self-adhesive copper tape on your pots / containers to form a barrier that slugs will not cross. Matt takes inspiration from gardens like Hidcote and Great Dixter and enjoys watching anything on TV presented by Monty Don or Louis Theroux.

Most products on the market are a type of copper foil or copper tape so this might work better and in fact some people suggest that a wider strip is better than a narrow strip. If I had to guess I would say I get about 1/20th -1/200th the slug prevalence I used to previously high slug traffic areas I have since “protected”. Jones added: “Slug pellets do have their problems but they have been tested for safety and when used to their manufacturers’ instructions the risks are quite minimal. In certain places within the UK you will be receiving higher doses of sulphuric acid in your rain than others.I used to do a bit of gardening a few years ago and I tried beer, egg shells, coffee, those green pellets with copper in them and nothing worked. As a neophyte gardener with a skeptical bent, the field is littered with misinformation and advertising. I also imagine in addition to whatever theoretical chemical/electrical property copper has that slugs don’t like, there is likely a mechanical component because irregular wire loops might be irritating to ooze across and there may be some variability in effect based on the size/configuration of the wire in the mesh. The copper works in the garden, so I suspect there is a reaction between the copper and the soil that can cause the copper to charge up to shock the slug. Hi find copper tape works where the plant is not close to a wall or other plants where slugs and snails can climb/drop/absail across etc.

I have had a respectable amount of success in slug deterrence using copper mesh as a slug barrier on the outside of wood planters.

It makes complete sense that when the molasses was all consumed that there would be a starvation problem. And as for using beer, they loved it, but there were times during very hot days that the rotting corpses of the slugs in the beer stank.

I wouldn’t waste my money on copper tap because my experiment shows it could only have a very temporary effect if any.I surrounded the middle of two planters with copper tape and finally have petunias and pansies that aren’t nibbled to shreds. Get a 9V PP3 battery, and clip, the one with two wires and the clip (maplin sell them) and stand the battery behind the pot, with the wires connected, 1 to each ring. Because I have the rings already I use them and they work well but only for a couple of days, until they oxidise.