Slug & Snail Facts

Slugs and snails are the most common pests in British Gardens. Due to the cool damp weather, 2007 was a hugely productive year for slugs and snails. A 2007 study by Bayer Cropscience estimated that there were 15 billion slugs across Britain. Each slug can eat twice its body weight daily and lay 500 eggs a year. That means a single slug can potentially have 250,000 grandchildren!

It’s pretty impossible to eradicate slugs and snails from your garden. Even if you were to lace the beds with toxic pellets and do nightly picking patrols, new creatures would quickly glide in from neighbouring properties.

We believe you have to learn to live with slugs and snails in your garden. However there are organic, nontoxic ways you can control their damage. Protect potted plants with Defeet, grow slug-resistant plants (such as hardy geraniums, lavender and rosemary), keep your garden free of debris (where slugs and snails live, feed and breed) and then accept there will be some losses.

Slugs and snails do play a necessary role in the ecology of a garden. They break down decaying matter; disperse seeds and produce rich compost like waste. They are food for birds, frogs, toads, hedgehogs, ground beetles and ducks.

Slugs and snails are hermaphrodites (they have both male and female reproductive organs). They produce slime to assist mobility. There are 29 species in Britain, the fastest of which is the Speckled Garden Snail that can travel at 50 metres per hour.

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