You can pick up some 'Sluggo' at the garden center or some other slug repellent. Sprinkle it around your hostas, reapply every month during growing season. You can use it for other plants too.

Also I have heard that planting garlic with them helps but having given up on hostas i haven't tried it. In pots copper tape round the rim of the pot deters them and also standing the pots on gravel or sand which they hate to cross.

We accept hosts as sacrificial victims of slugs... means they leave other, in our view, choicer, plants alone :)

I put my host as in pots with slug tape round them and so far so good.

I stand my plant pots in old copper buckets / coalbuckets add gravel to the pot it helps, but they can still get to them sometimes

Copper tape around pots works well for many of my plants. Harder to cope with in the ground and I stopped trying. i love MG's idea of sacrificial plants but I wouldn't want it to be a beautiful hosta.

Sacrificial plants!? Bah! Not my hostas! No way! The slugs can't touch my hostas. Each one has a name and was carefully chosen and placed. Don't let the slugs decide which hostas you can keep. 'Sluggo' works just fine, or 'Bug-Geta' by Ortho. The slugs can eat the weeds.

If they aren't noshing on our Hostas Bathgate they attack rather more precious alpines! Though even with us it has been so dry this spring we've not seen many slugs and snails :)

The poor snails can eat the weeds. There are always plenty of weeds around regardless of weather conditions. Hostas are off limits. They are not very selective, they're opportunists. They won't starve.

So next question- how do we tell them?

With poison or copper barrier can work too. Sprinkle poison around the hostas, dahlias & other plants you want to protect. You can also go out at night with a flashlight, pair of tongs & a bucket of soapy water or fling them over the hedges to the neighbor's side. Shhh!

The slugs and snails totally ignore any weeds in favour of the Hostas! Bulba is very enthusiastic when he weeds...