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La Puce wrote:
H Ryder wrote:
Do you find it works?
haven't actually tried it here this year yet but it certainly worked
previously on my heavy, sodden clay in Cheshire. I was under the
impression
that slug pellets left poisonous slug remains which killed birds and
frogs
etc which I wanted to avoid so, after trying and giving up on all the
various "safe to other wildlife barrier" methods, I tried nemoslug and
found
it worked well, even when applied at slightly less than the recommended
rate. I also found that it seemed to last longer than 6 weeks.

I'm waiting for my nematodes (megatoads as my son call them) to arrive.
I thought it only worked on baby slugs not the adult ones?! Also
there's two applications and the Organic Catalogue will dispatch the
first lots and 6 weeks later the second lots so that I don't use it all
at once. I thought that was really considerate of them )

I also thought some slug pellets are only ferrous phosphate and that it
breaks down to iron and phosphate nutrients in the soil?! Are they not?!

I use aluminium sulphate ones and you can get ferrous phosphate. These
work for me and are hopefully fairly harmless but I still use them in
small amounts and not near vegetables. The blue ones are metaldehyde
and possibly much more toxic but I do not actually know. I do not use
them anyway.

Des in slug ridden Dublin


I am having a crack with the Nematode things this year but AFAIK they only
work on slugs and not snails.
The Ferrous phosphate stuff is fairly harmless and is used medicinally for
folk with iron deficiency.
Aluminium sulphate. I don't know about the cumulative effects of aluminium
in the soil /veg.
The dreaded blue pellet things are, as you say, metaldehyde. I thought the
main objection to these was that the dead slugs get eaten by other
birds/animals and get ill/dead.
Here is the other side of the argument
http://www.gardenseeker.com/slug_pellets.htm