04 May 2024 , 08:00
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Many gardeners spend hours making sure their backyards look perfect, but you don't want to undo your hard efforts by inviting slugs in to wreak havoc.
If gardening doesn't come natural to you, it can feel overwhelming, with a whole host of differing advice out there. You need to learn how to feed and water your plants, prune them and get rid of weeds.
But can be easy to undo all those hard efforts if you don't make sure to keep certain pests at bay. Slugs, for example, are a species that like to eat soft fleshy leaves and seedlings - leaving unsightly ragged holes in the plants you so lovingly grew. They also eat vegetables and fruits, causing damage to crops.
And there's one common gardening tasks that's actually a "magnet" for them - so you should avoid it, according to gardening experts. If you want to avoid inviting slugs into your garden, you should avoid watering your plants at dusk,
According to the experts at Quintain Living, watering your crops at dusk, which is the time just before night when the daylight has almost gone but it's not completely dark, is a no-go. The experts warned: "Doing so will serve as a magnet for slugs, who will delight in chewing their way through your previous plants and seedlings."
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Instead, you should water your plants in the early morning, and not leave it too late. Slugs flourish in moist areas, and can rapidly multiply, which can cause substantial damage to plants and crops.
If you want to make sure your plants flourish from the offset, you should also make sure to nurture the soil. Before planting, you should make sure your soil is weed-free, and then break it up and turn it over, say experts.
You can add mulch, wheat straw, compost and other organic materials to enrich the soil, the Express reports. Then you shout plan out your crops properly, considering a month-by-month plan that will maximise the space which will "deliver a bountiful harvest".
This includes making sure not to squeeze in too many plants. They need to have plenty of room to "reach their full, delicious potential".