Eggshell Experiment

The sluggy residents of our garden have proved a problem last year and even more so this year. I am reluctant to use chemicals to get rid of them, so we've been throwing them beyond the fence, not into our neighbours' gardens but into the hedges that grow near the railway. However, every morning there was less food growing for us and more food in the slugs' tummies. Every single seedling gets eaten here, so I grow everything in containers first before planting out. I also accidentally purchased seeds of dwarf peas, which did not work at all. If you are not tall enough, you get eaten completely around here. 

There are many ways in the gardening magazines and online that claim to work, the simplest one of all - building a barrier for slugs from crushed eggshells.

Now - I am very skeptical about this, because I know that slugs and snails can climb over knives and razor blades etc. and not get hurt at all, so some eggshells, no matter how sharp, should only pose a little inconvenience to them by sticking to their foot because they are small. But using eggshells is always fun and I really enjoyed washing, drying and saving eggshells whenever we made eggy bread, scrambled eggs or baked a cake. Crushing them in hand was fun too, very satisfactory somehow :)

I decided to protect my runner bean seedlings, as there were not many of them and I like them so much.

So, did it work? The answer is..............................................................................................................partly. 

Some beans are still growing happily, while the little fella below is probably not going to make it, regardless of any eggshell barriers. Our slugs are simply adventurous.