THERE’S no prouder moment than seeing your hard gardening work pay off in the summer months.
But there’s one tricky pest that can put it all to waste in no time – slugs.
The little critters love nothing more than gobbling down plants and can drive us mad.
Despite plenty of people using pesticides or netting to stop them, one gardener revealed there’s an even simpler way to get rid of them.
And the best part is that it’s totally free and requires no extra work on your part.
Alexandra Campbell, a gardener and founder of The Middlesized Garden, revealed keeping slugs away is as simple as watering your plants at a specific time of the day.
She said: “Slugs and snails thrive in wet conditions and are most active at night.
“So watering your plants in the morning is a common sense way of making life a little more difficult for them. By evening the water will have been absorbed or will have evaporated.”
The clever and easy hack works because slugs prefer moist conditions.
Leaving the soil to dry out by night will make the surfaces in your garden more difficult for them to move and make the environment less attractive for them.
Not only does it stop slugs, it also ensures the water gets to the roots in the summer as hot afternoons can dry the soil out before the water gets there.
Another easy way to keep the pests out is by growing summer flowers and herbs that are thorny, hairy or have an unpleasant texture that slugs will have difficulty moving across.
She said: “Other good slug-resistant plants include daylilies, crocosmia, lavender, hydrangeas, salvia, thalictrum, poppies, roses, geraniums, Japanese anemones and asters.
“Look for plants with leathery, toxic or overly scented leaves which puts the slugs and snails off.”
Slugs also hate summer blooming flowers like lavendar because of their potent scent and acts as a natural repellent.
Many of these flowers also produce compounds which are toxic to slugs and will irritate or harm them, which will also stop them from feeding on plants.
Others are taking to going to their local hair salon to pick up a freebie to keep them away.
“I’m a barber and lately I’ve had a few customers asking for bags of hair to put around the outside of poly tunnels and planters as slugs can’t get past it,” said one hair stylist.
In an article of Gardening Tips on the Peter Nyssen website, they wrote: “Make friends with your local barber and ask for the hair clippings!
“Sprinkle a thin layer of human, cat or dog hair around your plants and the slugs won’t go on it.
“The hair will also add plant-feeding nitrogen to the soil as it slowly decomposes.”
