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Saw last night on gardeners world one of the presenters using the left offer coffee grounds as a kind of mulch to stop slugs. The general princible being that coffee is a diuretic and so stimulates the slug to produce more mucas which inturn just gets more coffee stuck to it and so on. Not the most pleasent of ways to go but then none are.

Anyone ever tried this and had any luck?

I have and it does work. Unfortunately I can't drink enough coffee to cover a big enough area. It is indeed a diuretic and apart from frequent trips to the loo too much gives me palpitations.

Meredith.

The simple solution to supply is to ask a local cafe to safe all their used grounds instead of binning them and then collect them every couple of days. I did wonder though what effect this has on the soil condition?

Feygan wrote:The simple solution to supply is to ask a local cafe to safe all their used grounds instead of binning them and then collect them every couple of days. I did wonder though what effect this has on the soil condition?

we get seven carrier bags a week of used coffee grounds, we use it as a soil conditioner. It is adding organic matter into the soil and aids in water retention, which for us is essential, we also chuck it here there and everywhere to increase soil depth (we on what was a shingle bank, so soil quality is not wonderful). I believe that it does overtime increase soil acidity, but you would have to add a hell of a lot of the stuff before it became a problem

Starbucks cafes give it away. Ask around your local cafes. If they can't give it away they have to pay to dispose of it.

Zoe

Does anybody know whether decaf would work, too?

It might. Decaf irritates my IBS just as much as caffeinated, so I would imagine it would irritate the slugs just as much.

Zoe

I did some experiments a year or two back and didn't find coffee grounds had a significant impact on slug damage. I guess I must have hard-boiled city slugs, who thrive on coffee and cigarettes (and tender young plants)....

Wulf

ps. I went back to just putting coffee grounds in the compost.

Tea is a worse diuretic than coffee. Wonder if that works too.

Nettle tea especially.

My slugs are enormous. I find several feasting on the compost heap and on the path outside my house daily that are 4" long and almost an inch fat! I put tea on the compost heap but that doesn't seem to kill them there. I can see the theory- it's actually the same theory as slug pellets. I think mine are just too big for the amount of tea- they are happy to much prickly raspberry plants let alone the young and tender!

The allotment is a totally different story, a few minute slugs that just aren't worth worrying about for the tiny holes they occasionally leave. I'm going to give up growing at home unless I can find a serious solution.

I watched this programme once (can't remember what or when - you know how it is) which studied the life of slugs. I think I was going through one of my "understand them to kill them" phases. It said there were loads of varieties of slugs and the ones that do the least damage are the huge caramel coloured ones. It's the small ones that wipe out all your plants in one night.

Sorry Peggy Sue...

Those are the ones I have- why me