Just call my man the slug whisperer… He never lived down the reputation so creatively given by our neighbours. It all started years ago when we decided to plant a herb garden and the basil was scented by slugs from a 20 mile radius. Slugs like basil, it appears. We caused a mass exodus down the back gardens in our street. Our neighbours were fascinated, and rather pleased, I’d imagine…I digress. We tried everything we could, having young children and pets. My aunt told us to save all our eggshells, crush them and place them around the plants. The eggshells were carefully draped around the bed and the rain came, burying them in the soil. Someone else said to cut a plastic drinks bottle to form a cloche over the seedlings, which worked, but then the plants grew… a hungry hedgehog with attitude issues was borrowed from a friend (we told it we ran a holiday camp) but was returned after it destroyed the potato planting. We strew ashes, my brother designed a battery powered electrocution system which fried my toes. In desperation (and this is where the slug whispering comes in), my husband took to setting the alarm clock to 2am, grabbing a torch and picking up each individual slug to throw over the garden fence. They invariably came right back. The neighbours were not amused by the slugs being flung into their gardens but thought the sight of a grown man with a torch gingerly picking up slugs at well past midnight every night was hilarious. As you can imagine, these nocturnal rendezvous had to stop when Mr Slugman started falling asleep at work.
Finally, I found out about beer traps so we spent two days designing a beer trap that would work for our needs. The traps went in, and for some reason the man of the house decided to be creative with the beer. We had not been told which beer worked best, you see. We bought a selection, from your cheap French lager to the best independent Somerset dark ale. Guess what we found out? Slugs are discerning individuals. They went for the dark ale!