I gather these may deter slugs used together or separately; I've been
saving some to try. But when do I apply it? After I've sown the seeds
and watered them in, or only after germination begins? The latter seems
more sensible, but I worry about the alkalinity of the wood ash damaging
the seedlings.

On a related but different note, I tried 'pre-baiting' the vegetable bed
with beer traps for a week before planting anything: the first traps
were almost more slugs than beer -- amazing -- but catches tapered
dramatically, and by the time I sowed the seeds I was down to 1-2
slugs/trio of traps/night.

regards
sarah

regards
sarah

--
Think of it as evolution in action.

sw wrote:
I gather these may deter slugs used together or separately; I've been
saving some to try. But when do I apply it? After I've sown the seeds
and watered them in, or only after germination begins? The latter seems
more sensible, but I worry about the alkalinity of the wood ash damaging
the seedlings.


I've saved quite a bit of my wood ash this year to try and once the
seedlings (which I'll let grow as much as possible) are planted out I'm
going to put it in lines some distance from the plants. With all this
rain I can't see it happening for a while and in any case I havent seen
any slugs about yet.

Kev,

The message k
from (sw) contains these words:

I gather these may deter slugs used together or separately; I've been
saving some to try. But when do I apply it? After I've sown the seeds
and watered them in, or only after germination begins? The latter seems
more sensible, but I worry about the alkalinity of the wood ash damaging
the seedlings.

When I had an unending supply of woodash, I used to store it bone-dry
, then it's much easier to apply, and retains the valuable potash
fertiliser. I used it to encircle the seed-row (or transplanted
seedlings), run lines of it round the strawberry bed and between the
rows etc. The defensive lines don't touch the plant stems, so no problem
with alkaline damage.

Janet.

Kevin Groves wrote:

sw wrote:
I gather these may deter slugs used together or separately; I've been
saving some to try. But when do I apply it? After I've sown the seeds
and watered them in, or only after germination begins? The latter seems
more sensible, but I worry about the alkalinity of the wood ash damaging
the seedlings.


I've saved quite a bit of my wood ash this year to try and once the
seedlings (which I'll let grow as much as possible) are planted out I'm
going to put it in lines some distance from the plants. With all this
rain I can't see it happening for a while and in any case I havent seen
any slugs about yet.

You're lucky, at least in that regard :-)

Thanks to both you and Janet; I'll try the lines some distance from the
plants.

regards
sarah

--
Think of it as evolution in action.