At the end of April I sowed sugar snap peas seeds, I erect a teepee (three tomato stakes tied together at the top with an old stocking) and then the seeds germinated. Fabulous.
A couple of weeks later though and the seedlings had disappeared. Actually thats not entirely true – I do have two rather pathetic looking seedlings which have battled to get to 10cm. Why am I having these problems – slugs (and possibly snails)!!!! Unfortuately lots of pots equals lots of hiding places, underneath, under the rim, just inside the drainage holes and so it goes on. I do periodic round ups but I always seem to miss some. Time to try something new. Everything always suggests beer traps, I have tried it previously – just putting out a stubby on its side and in all honesty it didn’t really work. This time though I sunk some of my daughters paint pots into the soil and then filled them with beer (Boags draught for anyone who is interested).
It worked fantastically well. First night with one pot = 18 slugs. Second night with 3 pots a further 25 slugs. Third night a few more and so on. By the end of the first week I had dispatched about 65 slugs and 1 snail as well as running out of beer.
I refilled the pots each day for the first 2 days then on the third day I left in the beer from the day before. I didn’t seem to catch any more slugs although it may be that birds ate the slugs from the previous day and the ones I could see on day 3 were new ones. When I put fresh beer in though I definitely did catch more. To be fair this isn’t the cheapest way of getting rid of slugs and there are many who would say it was a waste of good beer but it was effective.
