For gardeners, slugs and snails can be very annoying critters, despite being small and invertebrate. Especially in the large numbers they appear in each year, managing to eat away at our beautiful plants and flowers. But how can you naturally prevent slugs and snails from devouring your garden? We've listed some tips to help with this.

1. Make your garden unattractive to slugs

Sharp, dry objects can harm slugs and snails, so they'll avoid crawling over them. With the materials below, you can easily create a barrier around the plants or seedbeds that you want to protect. Some examples you can use in your garden include shell grit, crushed eggshells, river sand, lime, sawdust, rock dust, wood ash, cocoa shells, gravel, dolomite, sulphur and diatomaceous earth.

If it suits your garden and budget, slugs and snails certainly don't like copper. A few nice copper rings around the plants will definitely keep them at bay!
We are yet to test whether these hermaphrodite creatures like gold or silver!

2. Plants that slugs find "nasty"

Some plants can keep slugs and snails away with their strong scent. A few good examples of repellent plants are these:

• Indian cress (Tropaeolum majus)
• Hyssop (Hyssopus officinalis) 
• Lavender (Lavandula hidcote)
• Sage (Salvia officinalis, caradonna, pratensis, etc.) 
• Foxglove (Digitalis purpurea)
• Thyme (Thymus officinalis)
• Tomato (Lycopersicon)
• Garlic cloves, click here for info on garlic

3. Attract the natural enemies of slugs into your garden or put them there yourself

Trees and shrubs attract birds. Thrushes, magpies, crows, starlings and blackbirds in particular enjoy a slimy snack of slugs. Do you have some piles or stacks of branches and leaves in your garden? These are good for hedgehogs, who certainly enjoy a slug from time to time. Provide the right conditions for frogs or toads if you can, as their daily menu, too, features slugs as a favourite.

You can buy nematodes (Phasmarhabditis) in stores that sell gardening products. These are microscopic organisms that will parasitise slugs and snails. A bottle of 12 million (!) nematodes is suitable for about 40 m² of garden. They die off on their own once the slugs are all gone.

4. Trapping slugs

Place some roof tiles, large leaves such as cabbage or rhubarb leaves, or a damp tarp in your garden where there are lots of slugs or snails. In the morning, they will crawl underneath and you can pluck them from the underside. If you're more of an evening person, you can collect the slugs at dusk or in the dark with a torch.

5. Setting traps

Slugs and snails love the smell of yeast. Dig holes in the soil so that the top edge is level with the ground. Fill the holes halfway with yeast-rich beer or water diluted with yeast powder. With a little creativity, place some kind of canopy over the hole to prevent rain from diluting the liquid. Slugs and snails will be attracted to the smell of the yeast but won't be able to get out of the hole.

For the less handy among us, there are also decorative slug traps for sale in garden shops.

6. Slug pellets

If you do opt for slug pellets, choose a biodegradable type. This is safer for humans, animals and consequently the garden, but you should still use slug pellets in moderation! Sprinkle an average of 10 grains per square metre rather than scattering them around in handfuls. Better yet, place them under a roof tile (or something similar) or put them in a butter dish with an opening to ensure that rain and other animals cannot reach them. As with yeast, slugs and snails are attracted to the smell.

If, like us, you're a lover of Dahlias, you'll know that slugs particularly enjoy the young Dahlias, but are less interested in the more mature ones. A Dahlia is ideally suited to "forced growing".
Click here for more information on Dahlias.

Start fighting slugs early. In April, slugs lay their first ±400 eggs through cracks under clods of earth. Three weeks later, the eggs hatch and two months later they are adults. If you start early enough, you'll avoid an infestation later in the year.

Disclaimer: Not all slugs and snails are harmful. The biggest garden pest is the Spanish slug! And snails themselves don't cause much damage. Better still, the protected vineyard snails eat the eggs of the Spanish slugs. The black-spotted tiger slug or large earth slug even hunts them!