Salt and vaseline.

I made a quick visit to the plot today to dig up some potatoes and pick some calabrese. The slugs have been busy sliming over and eating the calabrese heads, so I decided to pick them all in the hope that I can better protect the next regrowth. I also lifted some young beetroots and discovered that these too had been burrowed into by the slugs. Finally, I picked a head of savoy cabbage which, yes you guessed it, was home to a family of slugs.

Not surprisingly my mind was filled with thoughts of slug destruction and earlier this evening I googled for solutions. One thing I learned is that beetroot does well near the sea and is not adverse to a bit of salt. If you pour salt on a slug it shrivels up and dies… GUARANTEED!

I will be sprinkling salt around my beetroot tomorrow!

Another thing I learned is that slugs don’t like vaseline or other greasy substances. One tip I read was to smear a continuous barrier of vaseline (or other greasy substance) around the rim of a plant pot, over which slugs will not pass. Before long I had an epiphany… what if I mixed salt with vaseline… a double whammy of slug barrier and slug death! I proceeded to google it and in the top five results was..

‘I covered myself in vaseline and pretended to be a slug.’

I couldn’t resist clicking but sadly this turned out to be a very short youtube clip of a video game. When it ended, the usual ‘recommended’ window of clips came up on the screen and one of them was…

Talk about going off on a tangent! I laughed myself silly, especially at some of the comments. Slugs forgotten momentarily!