Slugs & raised bed

InBloom

Hello everyone. I have a raised vegetable bed covered by a chicken wire mesh frame and a big problem with slugs. The pea plants have been eaten and all the bean plants went overnight down to bare stalks. Odd leaves I could accept but can't really grow anything for it! Does anyone have suggestions please? 

Pete.8

With this really dry weather the slugs are struggling to survive and seem to be munching through just about anything now.
I've lost many lettuce and several runner beans have had to be replaced.
Other than go out and hunt for them at night the only other options are nematodes or slug pellets.
The old type of slug pellets that were based on metaldehyde were toxic to a lot of wild life.
Those type of pellets are now banned and no longer available.
All slug pellets sold now are based on ferric phosphate (or similar).
This is harmless to everything except some of the slugs that cause a lot of damage.
Even if an animal eats a poisoned slug no harm will come.
When the pellets break down in the soil they become plant fertilizer.

purplerallim

The only other thing that has slowed slugs down, you can never stop them entirely,  are water retaining crystals. I sprinkled them on the soil around the plants and they dehydrate the slugs. When they are gooey just fork them into the soil, by that time the plants are often big enough to survive @InBloom  

pinut

I would recommend slug pellets as well.

It is supposed to be a poisoned bait so avoid the "rain proof" type as slugs and snails are not attracted by them.

When deploying the pellets strategically place a few granules around the perimeter on the inside of the raised bed away from your plants then place a few granules on the ground around the outside base of the raised bed.

The idea is to draw the slugs and snails towards the bait at the edges and not present them with green organic snacks on their way to the bait itself.

You can make a simple trap by cutting up a small plastic bottle - think of a yurt with a barrel of food in the middle. In other words, a bottle top full of bait with the bottom of the bottle acting like a tent to keep it dry. Of course, you will need to cut entrances for the tent.

If you are growing crops such as heads of lettuce in tight grid spacing and you find tiny slugs inbetween the leaves only then will you need to increase the dosage. If lettuce is grown at the four corners of a square then place the extra granule or two in the middle of the square - do that for every square in the grid.

Do not scatter masses and masses of pellets into the bed as that would be like telling every slug and snail in your garden and in your neighbours' garden where to gather.

If you want to enact a zero tolerance policy then scatter a few pellets around your garden where you think they might take refuge during the day. Do this especially in and around the compost heap, and always away from your prized plants.

Remember, for every gastropod you don't kill potentially 400-600 will return as that is how many eggs they produce in a year.

MikeOxgreen

Nematodes.