In reply to Flâneur Gardener.

I think slug life is a purgatory. I use an english butter knife with the round end to despatch them to try in the next realm.

The first year I had my garden I tried collecting the slugs and pouring boiling water over them, but in one evening walk around the garden I could collect more than a hundred – my record was 179 – so it soon became a bit tedious to collect that many.

I also encourage predators that will eat the slugs and their eggs. Roman snails, for instance, are not very agressive towards living plants, preferring dead plant matter and – crucially – the eggs and youngs of other snails and slugs, and I also have a toad, some blackbirds and some other birds that are helping me out. I gave up on pellets as they seemed to do very little to the slug population, and anyway I like the idea of trying to get the garden wildlife in balance, even though our slugs are an invasive species that does not lay dozens, but hundreds of eggs – and in the moist Danish soil, most of them WILL hatch and become new slugs!

The war is on! (Or; it will be, once spring arrives.)