Alan Titchmarsh has revealed his top tip for keeping slugs and snails away from your flowers before they bloom.
The gardener revealed he has a series of hostas in his border, but says they are like a “five star hotel” for slugs. And while he says you can often replace the flowers with those that will be left alone by the pests, he has found a way to deter them.
The 75-year-old says he has started to put copper collars around his hostas while their shoots are starting to emerge from the soil. Slugs and snails are said to “detest” crossing the copper rings to get to the plants.
Speaking on the Gardener’s World podcast, Alan said: “Now if you have got individual specimens, the most effective thing I’ve found are these copper collars, they look like a vicar’s collar, the sort of white thing he has around their neck, but it’s made of copper.
“You can sit these rings around the emerging hosta and if you get it around the hosta just as those shoots are beginning to emerge from the soil, the slugs and snails don’t like crossing them.
“The story is that if they walk across them, sliding their way, sliding across it, they get an electric shock. Now I’ve never been able to interview and find out if that is the case but it does seem to deter them.
“And that’s the critical stage really when you’re getting those shoots through the soil because you know what they’re like when they come out hostas, they’re pointed like little pyramids. If a slug takes a rasp out of one of those, when it unfurls, it’s like a net curtain, like slug origami, they open up and where one bite was, you’ve got 10 holes.”
Alan says many gardeners offer their own tips for getting rid of slugs and snails, including sharp sand, grit, crushed egg shells on their flowers. He has even tried putting sheep wool around plants to put off slugs.
For any gardener particularly keen on hostas but struggling with slugs and snails, he says you can grow them in pots. But anyone wanting to keep the flower would have to put them on pot feet to give them a gap underneath.
Of course, Alan explains any gardener wanting to avoid their garden being attacked by slugs can simply use flowers that will not be targeted by the pests. He added: “The easiest thing to do is to grow plants that don’t get affected or touched by slugs and snails, and there are a surprising number of them.
“There are general rules of thumb here, plants with hairy or downy leaves tend not to be attacked by sleeves, they clearly don’t like those bits of hair in their mouth.
“Stachys byzantina, or Lamb’s Ear, that never gets attacked. Neither do all of the hardy geraniums – I say all but the vast majority – never get touched by slugs and snails. Take a look around your garden and see what doesn’t get attacked by slugs and snails and what you can double up.
A 10 pack of copper collars for plants costs just £26.99 on Amazon.
