The Little Book of Slugs

According to these people, Britain has more slugs than anywhere else in the world. The Little Book of Slugs regales us with tales of frustrated gardeners spending nights outdoors spearing slugs with screwdrivers or creating networks of tiny electrified wires in order to kill them off. In a hundred pages, the frustrated gardener can learn of seventy different methods in order to help us deal with the enemy. Told in hilarious fashion and sprinkled with Shakespearian quotes (about slugs, of course), this would make a good read for for any gardener in need of entertainment during the winter nights.  by the The Centre for Alternative Technology, (CAT) and edited by Allan Shepherd  and Suzanne Gallant, the idea for the book was driven by the Bug the Slug campaign where readers contributed to www.ihateslugs.com with ingenious methods of slugbusting. The ihateslugs website is now defunct but the knowledge of generations of gardeners lives on in this tiny tome which is packed with ideas to slug it out (couldn't resist that one).



The book is divided into four sections. An understanding of the life cycle of slugs forms the basis of part 1 including fascinating facts such as slugs eat slugs and that throwing them on the compost heap can be a useful thing to aid the process of decomposition. Part two is a collection of seventy different methods of control sent in by the British public. The good, the bad and the ugly are all in here: instruments of death, sheeps' fleece spread on the garden, warm pee and someone who claims to swallow slugs whole believing them to be nutritious. There is also a list of slug resistant plants and the top 5 slug predators. Part 3 explains the CAT method, an organic approach of soil improvement, rotavating the soil (kills slugs eggs) and growing healthy plants that are strong enough to resist the onslaught. They claim that their methods mean that they rarely resort to traps or other means. Finally, part 4 reviews the effectiveness of each method, possibly the first of its kind in providing raw data on the traditional methods of barriers, beer traps and grapefruit skins.


The Little Book of Slugs is a great read, packed with puns that encourage us 'don't be sluggish' as well as a huge amount of information for such a small volume. It's brevity is its' strength; after all, who wants to settle down on at bedtime with an encyclopedia on slugs. There aren't any major negatives; however they don't explain how they arrived at the ratings for each method, whether that came from the campaign or they drew their own conclusions. As the book based itself on the www.ihateslugs.com website, it would have been better if they had done something to ensure the longevity of the website which is now defunct. Overall, these are minor points and the book would make a good present for any gardener with a slug problem and a sense of humour.