Apparently there has been a sharp rise in UK slug populations due to a wet summer and a mild winter; no break in eating or breeding for one of the gardener’s least favourite guests. The news report I heard earlier also suggested that the ‘Spanish Killer Slug’, immune to poisons, is also on the rise. That’s alright – I don’t use poisons but a small knife to keep the population down. The aim isn’t to eradicate slugs (or wildlife food as I like to think of them) but just to keep the edge off the numbers and give small plants a chance to grow up to be big enough that a few nibbles won’t hurt them.

There was also another slug story I spotted today (although published a couple of months ago). Scientists have worked out how to fit trackers to slugs, which is giving them better data on how the creatures move around. I doubt we’ll be rid of them entirely and that would be a bad thing in any case for the overall ecosystem but it is useful to understand them and to figure out how to keep them away from the places where their presence destroys crops we rely on.