1 week Ago By Angela Patrone
Unfortunately, slugs and snails breed all year round, but gardeners may notice peaks of egg laying in March and April, when, if conditions prove ideal, the eggs will hatch within 10 days. Individually and in groups, slugs and snails can cause serious damage to prized plants like hostas and lettuce. To repel these pests, it’s recommended to use garlic, but more specifically, in spray form applied straight to the leaves.
On Facebook's Gardening Hints and Tips page, Simon Hill detailed how to make this repellant and warned gardeners to avoid one common mistake: "Stop boiling your garlic to make garlic spray. Allicin is the garlic’s defence mechanism against being nibbled, and its power can be harnessed by gardeners as a non-toxic means to control slugs, snails, and other bugs." “However, heat damages the allicin and boiling it essentially created garlic flavoured water instead of releasing allicin into the water.
” Instead, Simon recommends another method to give you better results when deterring these pests. He said: “My cold water technique allows the allicin to steep into the water for a truly infused and potent natural deterrent to put them off your garden for life.” For this method, take one head of garlic and 200ml of water.
Crush, chop or blitz the garlic with the water before topping with cool water to make it up to one litre. Then add a teaspoon of washing-up liquid and leave it to steep overnight or for 12 hours before straining. Once the time is up, for one application, add two tablespoons of the allicin-infused water to a watering can and fill it with water.
Aside from slugs, this garlic water concoction will also help fight against pests like ants, aphids, caterpillars and whiteflies. Group members in the comments section share their thoughts on the effectiveness of this slug repellent. Jeannie Thorpe said: “I use garlic spray on everything, and it works.
Make sure you cover the plants and ground around them. Janet Hazard wrote: “I use the garlic spray everywhere, even on paving stones. So far so good.
” Maureen Stanley added: “Yes, I’ve used garlic water on my hostas and lilies and it worked, but make sure to keep using it.”.
