The slug ledger

Every defence works. The question is what each one costs, and the cost is
never the price on the packet.

Ranked, best first

1. Nematodes. Expensive, needs warm wet soil, and works. Six weeks of cover
   per application, so three applications a season if you mean it.
2. Beer traps. Cheap, effective within about a metre, and you have to empty
   them, which is genuinely unpleasant.
3. Copper tape. Works on pots and only on pots, and stops working the moment a
   leaf bridges the rim.
4. Night patrols with a torch. Free, effective, and it costs you the evening.
5. Pellets. I do not use them, because the plot has hedgehogs.

What does not work

• Crushed eggshells
• Coffee grounds
• Wool pellets, in my soil, though people I trust swear by them
• Hoping

The thing that changed most

Not a defence at all: raising transplants to a decent size before they go out.
A slug can strip a two-leaf seedling in a night. It can only annoy a plant
with six leaves and a root system.

This season’s plan

1. Nematodes in the brassica bed, mid-May
2. Beer traps around the hostas, refilled weekly
3. Nothing at all for the beans, which have never once been touched
4. A torch by the shed door

The ledger entry I keep forgetting

Slug damage is worst in the week after transplanting and almost irrelevant a
month later. Everything on this list is really a way of buying one week.