Slug pellets or Murphy sluggit or any of the more environmentally friendly ones at the garden centre.

Hi Piplyn,

Congrats on finishing the decking and on such a good budget too!

Slugs and snails tend to avoid anything that's aromatic, furry or tough-leafed. There's really quite a huge array of things that they won't go for, depending on what kind of garden you are trying to create. My favourite slug-proof plants are the Tree Paeonies - they look delicate and exotic but pest-wise are as tough as old nails in the garden.

There are lots of different approaches to getting rid of slugs, it depends on the layout of your garden and the size of the area you need to protect. You can use pellets, but they don't last very long (especially in wet weather) and even the organic variety "Advanced" can't be great news for the wildlife (thrushes, frogs, toads, hedgehogs, beetles etc.) that would otherwise be eating the slugs for you.

You can also get nematodes like "Nemaslug" - little parasitic organisms that kill the slugs from within. These are very effective, but can be quite expensive over a large area and need to be re-applied every 6 weeks or so.

I personally like the barrier approach, where you protect individual plants, pots, or entire beds by surrounding with a wall of something the slugs can't or won't cross. Copper is supposed to work well (although I've never had much luck with in on the ground) and anything spiky is good too. Crushed egg shells or spiky coarse gravel. Better still is the "Ecocharlie Slug & Snail Deterrent" which is made from crushed, recycled ceramic shards - they are very spiky but also mucous absorbent, preventing the molluscs from travelling across them at all.

Finally, outside a barrier you can create all sorts of slug traps - either beer traps to catch and dispatch them, or just flat stones, woods, even cardboard and carpet under which they'll congregate allowing you to collect them during the day.

cheers