How can I stop slugs damaging my plants?

Q: My garden is suffering very badly from snail and slug damage this spring after all the wet weather. Are there any plants that they don’t like to eat that you could recommend?

A: There’s no doubt that it’s been a truly terrible year for slug and snail damage, a result of so many months of heavy rain as well as the higher-than-average winter temperatures that together suit them so well. April-May is also always a very challenging pressure point in the growing year for damage, with the tender young growth of many seedlings and herbaceous perennials emerging from the ground just as slugs and snails are at their most active in terms of their breeding cycles. But if you can get plants and seedlings through this vulnerable phase, then they’ll typically become far more resilient as the season advances.

Organically acceptable slug pellets will help to keep slug attacks at bay but are less effective during periods of heavy rain as well as expensive to use on a wide scale. They’re also not recommended for very regular use as the iron they contain can discourage earthworm activity. Nematode control used to be another reliable option that organic gardeners could avail of but unfortunately hasn’t been available for several years, both for technical reasons as well as because of Brexit.

Encouraging a range of habitats to attract their natural predators (birds, hedgehogs, frogs, ground beetles) will also help. So will homemade nettle feed, as will beer traps, although these need to be replenished regularly in wet weather.

This year I’m also going to try using a homemade garlic spray on the recommendation of a gardening friend who swears by it. He pops garlic cloves into a lidded bucket of water and then applies the liquid every