Question on slugs

[dredger]

Hello,

I maintain a relationship with an agronomist (he's well known now on the net, promotionning the electro-culture, his name is Yannick Van Doorne).
In a recent email, he made an asumption regarding the slugs. I suppose that some (many?) people here who have a garden have or had a problem with the slugs.
Here's a copy/paste of what he wrote about, in french first :


Les Limaces, amie ou ennemie ?
Un sujet "chaud" qui excite, énerve, désespère les jardiniers... je peux vous dire que dans mon jardin ca grouille grouille grouille., il y en a plein... et contrairement à ce qu'on pourrait penser elles ne dévorent pas ou presque pas mes cultures, salades, choux, radis, tournesols. J'ai observé avec les années que toutes les zones où j'installe de l'électroculture il n'y quasiment plus de de problèmes de limaces malgré leur présence parfois en grand nombre. Mon hypothèse est que quand la vitalité est augmenté ou l'énergie de la plante est assez élevée, les limaces ne les dévorent pas car elle ne mangent que les plantes ou feuilles plus faibles pour plein de raisons divers et variés. Elles nous rendent ainsi bien service comme les vers de terre.

This could be traduced and summarized like this in english :
He's using the "electroculture" to raise the vitality and energy of the various plants he cultivates and noticed that the slugs almost never eat his plants, or almost.
He makes the asumption that if the vitality or energy of a plant is strong enough, the slugs will not eat it and focus on weaker ones.

I searched on "slug" on the forum but did not find any relevant discussion about this ... ok it's a small subject, but looking at the "bright incoming future", having a few tricks on how to avoid his garden to be devoured by slugs is worth it.

So, an interresting question to ask to the C's, or maybe 2 ... could be "Is there a relation between the plants devoured by the slugs and their energy/vitality ?"
Sub question could be : does the electro-culture raises the plant's energy/vitality ? But about this last question, I think that Mr Van Doorne already answered it by his experimentations, it's "yes". And I think there are many other ways to do so, I read in the past that plants like music (ok, maybe not any kind of music ^^)

Cheers all

 

[Turgon]

Most slugs primarily feed on decaying vegetation, so that would explain why they don't go after the vital plants. I just spent a few minutes researching it and found that out so I doubt there's a need to ask the C's about it. ;)

 

[Keit]

There is a saying in Russian, that wolves are sanitary assistants of the forest. They help to control the population and "remove" the weak and sick. Using the same analogy, who knows, perhaps slugs are "sanitary assistants of the garden". :) And I agree that we can figure this one out by ourselves. Learning is fun. ;)

 

[Christine]

Most slugs primarily feed on decaying vegetation, so that would explain why they don't go after the vital plants. I just spent a few minutes researching it and found that out so I doubt there's a need to ask the C's about it. ;)

My slugs to eat my salads in full growths, no decompositions!

 

[dredger]

Hello,
After having read other information on the subject, I read that the slugs don't like electricity, and that a small electricity current can help to make them flee.
As the testimony of Yannick is based on a garden "helped" by "electro-culture", maybe the reason, or one supplementary reason of the fact that the slugs don't come is because there's a small electric current around and they flee it ?

I just read a lot of time that the slugs are a pain for all the owners of a garden, even if you have (what seems to be) healthy vegetables, they are anyway "attacked".
Of course, reason may be simply that they eat what they can, in priority decaying/ill vegetables, but if there aren't any, they "attack" the healthy ones ?

 

[John G]

Yeah they apparently can like healthy plants especially in moist, shady gardens. When I was young and we had tomato plants, we used to use the beer trap that is mentioned here.

http://www.extension.umn.edu/garden/insects/find/slugs

 

[zak]

(...)
So, an interresting question to ask to the C's, or maybe 2 ... could be "Is there a relation between the plants devoured by the slugs and their energy/vitality ?"
Sub question could be : does the electro-culture raises the plant's energy/vitality ? But about this last question, I think that Mr Van Doorne already answered it by his experimentations, it's "yes". And I think there are many other ways to do so, I read in the past that plants like music (ok, maybe not any kind of music ^^)

Cheers all

The following can be also considered:

The new study shows that insects leave a specific legacy that remains in the soil after they have fed on a plant. And future plants growing on that same spot can pick up these signals from the soil and pass them on to other insects. Those messages are really specific: the new plant can tell whether the former one was suffering from leaf-eating caterpillars or from root-eating insects.

“The new plants are actually decoding a voicemail message from the past to the next generation of plant-feeding insects, and their enemies,” said first author Dr Olga Kostenko of the Netherlands Institute of Ecology. “The insects are re-living the past. This message from the past strongly influences the growth and possibly also the behavior of these bugs. Today’s insect community is influenced by the messages from past seasons.”

The team grew ragwort plants in a greenhouse and exposed them to leaf-eating caterpillars or root-feeding beetle larvae. Then they grew new plants in the same soil and exposed them to insects again.

“What we discovered is that the composition of fungi in the soil changed greatly and depended on whether the insect had been feeding on roots or leaves,” Dr Kostenko said. “These changes in fungal community, in turn, affected the growth and chemistry of the next batch of plants and therefore the insects on those plants.”

Growth and palatability of new plants in the same soil thus mirrored the condition of the previous plant. In this way, a new plant can pass down the soil legacy or message from the past to caterpillars and their enemies.

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