Yet another slug/snail solution

And I don't mean dissolved slugs.

Anyway, at the risk of teaching grandparents to suck eggs, and well aware that anyone reading this is way more experienced than I, I nevertheless expose myself to your potential congratulations with this idea, that is probably about as original as a Greenhalgh painting but anyway here goes.

It is not a cheap solution to combatting slugs, although after the initial outlay that could be viewed as a capital expense of enduring benefit, there is no ongoing cost beyond the occasional replacement due to wear and tear or corrosion.

Also it only works for pot plants, not for plants in beds. Which is of course unfortunate, as there are several defences that lend themselves to pot plants where bedded plants are in fact the most vulnerable and most in need of defence.

What I do is buy 16 inch flat-bottomed wire hanging baskets, remove the hanging chains, place them upside down on the patio and plonk the plant pots on top of the inverted baskets.

You can use smaller baskets than 16 inch, which would be cheaper, but it is a bit harder to find the flat-bottomed variety, and the larger the basket the greater the stability in (eg) a wind.

If you can't get hold of the flat-bottomed variety (they are available on Amazon), you can make do with a round-bottomed one and apply a hammer in a judicious manner to flatten the bottom, necessary for the provision of stability.

I have found this to be very effective. The slugs and snails seem to have a problem climbing the wire, and it has the humane benefit of not relying on chemicals and poisons.

There is a picture of my solution in the following link. You probably have to download the JPEG file to view it.

Sadly I only have one liked post on this forum so I cannot post a link. You will have to manually enter Haitch - tee - tee - pee - ess then a colon followed by two forward slashes, then "kvisit" followed by full stop then "com", another forward slash, and finally "Su7nzAw"

Or maybe a kind mod can insert it. What a palava. I am sure that I have posted an image file here before.

 

Hey I just realised how to upload a photo to the gallery section of this forum.
OK it is not embedded within this thread, and I cannot link to it directly from this post, but at least you don't have to go off-site to download the pic. If you look for an album called slug-defence.467 then you should find it.

 

Interesting, will give this a go as I have several old wire baskets, got some dahlias in pots, growing well, and been checking for expected slug raids.

 

What a beautifully-written post!