In message , Hussein M.
writes
On Mon, 26 May 2003 21:14:03 +0100, Max Wright
wrote:

As an alternative to beer (or yeast and sugar and water, which slugs
also find attractive), you might try bran. Whether or not it actually
attracts them I'm not sure, and the idea that they eat so much of it
that they explode is one of those myths, but they obviously like it very
much when they find it and tend to stay on it feeding.

And there was silly me thinking that the effect of the bran was to gunge
up their sticky pads and they didn't like it at all!


It looks to me as though smaller slugs can indeed get stuck in it,
perhaps because they can't produce enough mucus, or perhaps because they
seem to have a tendency to go right into it, whereas the larger ones
just stay on the edge feeding.

HDRA recently ran an experiment in which they asked members to plant out
two batches of seedlings, one protected by rings of bran and one not.
Members were simply asked to quantify the relative amounts of slug
damage over a period of (I think) up to three weeks. They found a
significant benefit in the first few days but much less so afterwards,
as you might expect if bran goes off. As far as I remember they didn't
come to any conclusions about how exactly this benefit was achieved,
though. Was it because slugs don't like (or are incapable of) crossing
(fresh) bran or because they do like eating it (more than they like
eating seedlings)?

--
Max Wright
www.wys-systems.demon.co.uk/plotcrop