Slugs cause a lot of damage to the garden. They also do not disdain the foliage and flowers of the hydrangea and can eat entire plants bare in a very short time, especially in humid weather conditions.
How to protect hydrangeas from slugs?
To protect hydrangeas from snails, you can take preventive measures such as proper mulching, watering in the morning, building boundaries with snail fences, coffee grounds or stones, encouraging beneficial insects and avoiding beer traps or slug pellets.
Preventive measures against pests
You can do a lot in advance to avoid a snail invasion in the hydrangea bed.
Mulch properly
Covering the ground around the hydrangea with a layer of mulch has many benefits. Unfortunately, fresh plant residues such as leaves or grass clippings offer the snails optimal living conditions and thus attract the animals. Therefore, mix dry straw with the mulching material and only apply a thin layer of mulch.
Water in the morning hours
Water the plants in the morning so that the leaves dry well. The slugs are mainly active in the evening and at night and prefer plants with fresh, moist leaves. Therefore, avoid spraying the plants and water the hydrangea with a wide stream.
Limitation of the beds
There are various barriers you can use to keep snails out of the hydrangea bed:
- Snail fences and snail collars (€29.00 on Amazon)
- Coffee grounds
- Ashes
- pointy stones
- Sawdust
Fighting snails
To keep the number of pests under control, you should collect crawling animals in the evening. Lay out boards in the bed or place upside down flower pots near the hydrangea. The snails hide under these traps so that you can easily collect the animals the next day.
Promoting beneficial insects
Make the garden as natural and diverse as possible and offer beneficial insects such as hedgehogs or toads suitable shelter.
Beer traps do more harm than good
You often hear the tip to bury beer traps in the bed to combat annoying slugs. The smell of the barley juice is so tempting for the animals that the snails from the neighbor's garden are also magically attracted to it. As a result, you often end up with more snails in your garden than before.
Avoid slug pellets
Slug pellets promise quick success in combating slugs. However, keep in mind that with this remedy you not only kill the slugs, but also the useful shell snails. If pets or children ingest the active ingredients they contain, they often also show symptoms of poisoning.
Tips & Tricks
Shell snails such as the vineyard, grove and garden ribbon snails prefer to feast on wilted leaves. Smaller shell snails also clean the branches of the hydrangea from algae and fungi and thus ensure plant he alth.
