nematodes

[mew]

Any suggestions as to the best kind to buy (or are they all pretty much standard across the board) and where to buy them from / websites?? / ebay??

Want to get some asap to help with those bleeding slugs grrrrr !!!

Thank you
MEW x

[Thurston Garden]

Mew I have not used them (yet) but there's a competition in this month's Kitchen Garden mag with 30 packs are individual prizes. Think I might enter...

I can only recall seeing one brand and I think they are about £10 which does 40sqm.

[Jandra]

Until you got the nematodes (which I consider too expensive myself) you could try beer traps. Apologies for the size (sorry, sorry), I don't know how to change that.

Here's one night's 'harvest'.






Good luck, Jandra

[Thurston Garden]

Ohhh - get the frying pan on!

I have used beer traps in the past, (but never had such a haul!) and will do so again now I am working on a smaller scale than previously. If I am lucky enough to win a box in the KG competition, I would treat my tatties to them I think!

[Stonehead]

We've been using nematodes for four years and have found them very effective, especially from year two onwards. As we have far more ground to cover than the 100sq m of nematodes that we can afford (two applications), we apply them to the salad/leafy beds and the brassica beds.

We get almost no slug damage now in the vegetable beds and traps catch only one or two slugs a month. But if I go outside the vegetable patch, for instance into the herb garden, and put out a few beer traps, I get scores of the blighters.

For us, the cost has been worth it as we've more than recovered it in terms of undamaged yield of vegetables.

[Jandra]

OK. Perhaps I should reconsider.

I'm currently converting part of my plot to raised beds ...
(I've tried preaching, but that didn't convert them, so now I'm applying my husband's brawn, which is much more effective)
... and that should make it more feasible to use nematodes.

Next year I'll do an experiment. 40 m2 should cover quite a few of my raised beds and then I'll try and grow a juicy lettuce on a treated and an untreated bed.

Jandra

[hedgewizard]

There's no doubt that nematodes work, and that continued use reduces slug damage. My problem with this is that because they also cause a crash in the population of slug predators then you have to keep using them year after year, which makes them a very expensive option.

You have to decide what's right for you, and that depends on your plot size, surroundings, etc. In my own situation I prefer a multiple approach, including reducing slug habitat, growing susceptible plants in pots and modules until big enough to shrug off a little slug damage, and defending particular seedlings. It works well enough for me!

[Stonehead]

We do reduce slug habitat, start many plants in modules and pots (but not having a greenhouse and having a need to grow a lot of veg, we also need to sow direct), and we defend particular seedlings.

But we quickly found that birds, hedgehogs, shrews and other predators were barely making an impact on slug numbers. Using beer traps helped, but with a couple of traps per bed and 20 beds to defend, that's a lot of beer!

Using organic slug pellets would be vastly more expensive that nematodes, so that ruled them out.

Over and above that, our vegetable beds are only a very small proportion of our land so there are plenty of slugs elsewhere.

Thinking about it, we must be doing something right as bird numbers on the croft have soared since we started here, there are many, many more frogs and toads, hedgehogs, moles, shrews and the like are prolific (in fact, moles are actually becoming a little too prolific), and the number and species of insects, spiders and invertebrates such as worms and slugs has gone through the roof.

So I don't think using nematodes has to be necessarily wrong simply because it dramatically reduces slug populations in a few places. And if you think about, reducing slug habitats, starting plants inside and defending particular plants is also going to lead to a reduction in slug numbers, and therefore less food for their predators.

[red]

growing susceptible plants in pots and modules until big enough to shrug off a little slug damage, and defending particular seedlings. It works well enough for me!

yeh we do that - along with slug picking at night... you can easily get control of a greenhouse or other confined space, just by collection.. and as for 'outside' it does help to reduce the population. Tis labour intensive though

the collections go into a lidded pot for a nice breakfast treat for the hens.

[MKG]

I can only repeat that we grow an awful lot of frogs and we haven't seen a single slug in a dangerous position for years. And our population of thrushes has not been affected in any strongly visible way. Mowing the lawn is a nightmare in spring (suidical froglets), but, hey, I like long grass and if I set the mower high, it goes straight over most of them.

I cannot swear that the frogs are the answer to slugs, but I'd strongly urge anyone to build ponds (ours, I calculate, are some 2 per cent of total ground area and, as I say, we're effectively slugless).

Kermits are your friends!

[Jandra]

The pic of the dead slugs shown earlier was about 8 meters from the side of a ditch (sloot, in Dutch) where we get frog concerts all day long now and a heron finds enough food to stay at the allotments. Every (!) plot borders on a ditch, so that all allotmenteers can irrigate their plots. I'd say rather more than 2% of the total area is frog-friendly water (filtered by a reed bed, so it's good quality for irrigation). So I assume we have a healthy frog population. And we've got toads too. Yet... slugs galore!

I'm happy for you that you dont have a slug problem, MKG. And perhaps your frogs ar better 'sluggers', but personally I'd rather trust nematodes, beer traps and planks (turn over and kill slugs underneath) to do the job than frogs.

Just my 2 eurocents.

Jandra

[MKG]

OK Jandra - I'll swap you a dozen of my super-kikkers (guaranteed slug-assassins) for one Dutch bifstuk (my God, were they good). It's a bargain!!!!

[red]

we have large frog and toad population.. along with large slug and snail population....

saw two toads in the greenhouse today.. am encouraging them to stay..

beer traps did not work for us as we have badgers in the area.. often see them at night.. they drank the beer.. in fact badgers idea of a perfect drink... beer garnished with a few slugs...

[mew]

Hi Stonehead

Where do you get your nematodes from? shop or on line? Do they work on snails too or just slugs?

Thanks again
MEW

[MINESAPINT]

As far as I understand nematodes are tiny white worm like creatures which I find in adundance in manure. Are these the wrong type of nematodes or are they not nematodes at all?

MINESAPINT