Last year I bought some copper slug and snail rings I never had a chance to use, so I’m going to give them a go now. I’ve heard a lot of good things about them, so my expectations are high.
The ones I have are made from strips of copper with a notch cut in them so they can form a ring. I have several of exactly the same rings, so it would also be possible to link 2 or more of them together to make a larger ring, if this were desirable.
I have seeds of a squash called Zucchino Rampicante (also called Tromboncino) which I got too late to start indoors. I’m using a lot of straw mulch in the sweet corn bed where I want to plant the squash, and I’m afraid slugs living in the straw would destroy the young seedlings without any protection, so I’m going to try planting the seeds inside the copper ring:
The company that sold me the rings warned I have to be very careful not to allow any material near the ring that a slug or snail could use as a bridge to step over the barrier, and I think it’s going to be a challenge to keep pieces of straw from blowing onto the ring (you can already see some potential problems in this picture).
Am I crazy or what?
Does anyone else have experience with this?
We don’t have many slugs so we haven’t tried that, but I’ve heard from other people that copper rings are great at keeping slugs away.
As for them finding a way over and inside the ring, a couple days ago I found a slug on the very top leaf of a 2+ foot cluster of bee balm. I had no idea they could climb like that. So, yeah, watch out for them using stray straws as a bridge to climb in!
Good luck with the squash. I don’t think I’ve ever had tromboncino, but it looks awesome!