What do slugs and snails eat, and how to garden with them?

Many permaculture gardeners struggle each season with hordes of hungry slugs, devouring the fruit of days of hard work. All the natural slug pellets are tried, often in vain, the damsels are picked up, moved, re-picked, … re-re-re-moved…, the halo of your headlamp searches the weeds, dark circles hollow out your face…

What if garden design, based on knowledge of what slugs eat, both as a consequence and as a preventive measure, could solve the problem?

That’s what I’m trying to highlight in this article.

But beforegoing any furtherI suggest you read the thumbnail article below. Then return to this one.

I. What does a slug eat? Which plants does she prefer?

1. Avoiding plants that slugs like to eat: probably the best idea

First of all, if you have recurring problems with slugs, one of the simplest and most obvious ideas to implement is toavoid as much as possible the vegetable plants they like to eat.

Because, if you’re a permaculture gardener, your garden is likely to be teeming with a variety of naturally occurring plants (most of which are unfairly referred to as “weeds”). If the plants in your vegetable garden are no more attractive to slugs than what grows naturally in your garden, there’s no reason for them to concentrate there, as is often the case.

2. List of vegetable plants that slugs like to eat :

Here’s a list of vegetable plants that are highly sensitive to slugs, which you can avoid planting if spring is synonymous with an explosion in the slug population:

• Basil
• Cabbage
• Strawberry (fruits)
• Raspberries (fruit)
• Beans
• Leaf lettuce (head and Boston)
• Corn
• Soybeans
• Green salad
• Bell pepper plants
• Squash seedlings
• Young zucchini plants
• Cucumber seedlings
• Beans
• Celery seedlings
• Kohlrabi
• Radish leaves
• Asparagus
• Spinach

“But they’re all there! …” you might say. “I’m not going to eat potatoes and tomatoes for every meal! Yes, that’s true, and that’s why I’m proposing that we look at solutions to this problem right away.

3. How to garden with plants that are highly sensitive to slugs?

1. How to protect seedlings and young plants from slugs?

Many plants in your vegetable garden are sensitive to slugs throughout their development (radishes, lettuces and cabbages, basil, etc.). However, most plants are much more sensitive in their early stages of development (cucurbits, for example). A good solution for these plants is to protect the young plants, and only plant them oncethey are sufficiently vigorous: they will then be less attractive to slugs and snails, and better able to withstand any damage they may suffer when they come to eat them. Keeping these young plants indoors is a very good solution. In general, it is better not to sow directly in the ground.

2. Selecting the most slug-resistant plants

Another strategy you can implement is to rely on Mr Darwin, although this is a much longer-term approach.

For every species, nature applies natural selection… so that only those individuals best adapted to their environment can procreate. The aim is to pass on their genes (and therefore their anatomical and/or behavioral characteristics) to their offspring. This gives species remarkable long-term resilience and adaptability in the face of major changes in their environment. Plants are also subject to natural selection.

If you plant 10 zucchini plants in your garden, the diversity of genetic heritages means that none will have exactly the same characteristics as its neighbor. Among these differences, the plants will probably not all have the same attractiveness to slugs (their texture and/or “taste” will be very slightly different).

Sometimes, you’ll notice that one of your plants has been attacked less by slugs than the others.

What you can do is collect the seeds from this plant (its genetic heritage), to resow next season. If it turns out that this zucchini plant was indeed less attacked due to its lower attractiveness to slugs (and not just by luck, as it’s also possible), then, by continuing to proceed in this way, season after season, your plants will be more resistant to slugs.

3. Sow old varieties of plants that slugs don’t eat.

A simpler method, and one that’s quicker to set up, is to choose heirloom plant varieties directly. Over the last few decades, plants have been selected with the aim of keeping only those that bear the most fruit, the biggest, and the tastiest. Climatic and environmental hazards (drought, slug population explosion, etc.) were contained by technological “progress” (abundant watering, metaldehyde granules, etc.).

But back then, when all these technologies didn’t yet exist, the plants we selected were the most naturally resistant, because they were the ones that survived.

Many old varieties have been preserved, and their greater natural resistance to slugs is a real asset.

II. How to use the knowledge of what a slug eats: the massive sacrificial technique

1. The massive sacrificial technique: why? And how do you keep slugs out of your garden?

The sacrificial bed, as its name suggests, consists in dedicating a part of your garden to slugs, to limit the damage to your vegetable plants. If you see this as a gift for their usefulness in the garden, it’s also a way of focusing their “attention” on plants that are of little importance to you, but very attractive to them (it’s the same principle as with surface composting).

Imagine you’re with friends, and you’re all absolute fans of pancakes. You’re in a pedestrian square, and there’s a pancake stand at one end of the square, and a cotton candy stand at the other.

Chances are you’ll be heading for the pancake stand. And even if one of your friends ate some the day before, and goes off to buy cotton candy, there’s a better chance that the majority of you will enjoy those warm rolled pancakes.

In your garden, let’s imagine that the cotton candy stand is your vegetable garden. Set up the pancake stand, which slugs prefer.

2. List of plants that slugs love to eat, for use in a sacrificial bed

Here are the variations you could offer slugs and snails in your stand:

• Lemon-sugar yellow mustards
• Chestnut cream sunflowers
• Hostas strawberry jam
• Dahlia banana-nutella
• Zinnia caramel salted butter
• Garrigue honey radish
• Pear-chocolate rapeseed
• Watercress with maple syrup
• Dandelion chantilly

III. Put what slugs prefer to eat in the garden

What you can also do, in addition to creating a sacrificial bed in a remote corner of the garden (to keep the majority of slugs away from your vegetable garden), is toadd plants that slugs love to eat, inside your vegetable garden. To use the analogy from earlier, there will always be a few slugs wandering up to your cotton candy stand (either by chance or because they were close by). Your pancake stand at the other end of the garden won’t interest them (it’s far too far away and they won’t detect it, or the (instinctive) cost/benefit of this move becomes low).

This means planting “sacrifice” plants (which are usually at the heart of a slug’s diet), also within your vegetable garden, between your most valuable plants.

To do this, go back to part II.b. to select them 😉

IV. Plants destined to be eaten by slugs: the psychological approach to have

Finally, I wanted to highlight an aspect that I feel is important. When choosing plants to “sacrifice“, remember that you really must be prepared for everything to be devoured.

It’s easy to fall into the trap of creating an elegant ornamental bed that you’ll fall in love with. And you’ll finally be ready to leave it to the slugs and snails… only to find yourself right back where you started.

If you’re afraid of falling into this trap, choose plants that look as unadorned as possible. Avoid sunflowers, dahlias, zinnias… and plant dandelions, rapeseed, mustard, … instead.

Conclusion

Choosing the most slug-resistant
slug-resistant vegetable plants
The choice of the most slug-resistant varieties of vegetable plants, and the layout of the garden, are priorities for dealing with major seasonal increases in the number of slugs and snails.

Knowledge of these gastropods, and in particular their eating habits and preferences, is, I believe, crucial to the effective implementation of these means of action.

Even better! Follow scrupulously these 7 steps 👇

This is the action plan I devised following the findings of dozens of scientific studies on the subject.

I owe the success of my cabbages, salads, strawberries and cucurbits to it.

Click here to find out more:

Related articles:

Anti-slug plants

Slug-resistant plants

Bibliography

• To qualify this article: Reed, J. M., Paine, M. E., & Million, J. N. (2008). Slugs as Generalist Herbivores: Tests of Three Hypotheses on Plant Choices. Ecology, 89(11), 3138-3148.
• Source: https: //www.slughelp.com/plants-snails-and-slugs-like-to-eat-vegetables-herbs-flowers/ – an excellent site, which I recommend.