with the rainy spring, slugs invade the gardens!

Gardeners must fight against this gastropod which swarms due to the rainy weather of recent weeks and devours everything in its path.

While France experienced its 4th rainiest spring, slugs abounded in the gardens at the beginning of June. Because slugs love rain, which allows them to produce mucus. Suffice to say that in recent years with the repeated droughts, it hasn’t really been good weather to hang out outside. But in 2024, everything is in place for them to enjoy it to their heart’s content. Mild temperatures all winter, we’re starting to get used to it, but above all rain, rain and more rain.

So here are the slugs arriving, like a silent army, at the lightning speed of 0.002 kilometer hours, and with them the articles listing the best techniques for getting rid of those that are often called the worst enemies of gardeners, voracious dirt ravaging the salads of their cravings. Big cravings because slugs, like snails, are gastropods. From the ancient Greek “gaster” which means the stomach and “podos” the foot, that is to say literally “foot bellies” or, to put it another way, stomachs on legs. And it is precisely because the slug is always hungry that it is very useful. Because what it likes to eat are plants and mushrooms but especially plants covered with fungi, that is to say diseased plants.

Clearly, if the slug is the enemy of gardeners, it is above all the friend of the gardens that it cleans, like a little slippery and sticky trash can, or a scavenging animal, if you prefer, it sounds more serious. A precious animal, which feeds of nature in decomposition to better recompose it. uOnce the slug has digested all this organic matter, preferably rotten, it releases the nutrients which will return to the soil and thus contribute to making it better. It therefore plays a major ecological role by intervening in the recycling of necromass, the dead organic matter of ecosystems, but also of course by serving as an essential pantry for birds, hedgehogs and toads.

Don’t be fooled by appearances, they are sometimes deceiving. If there are many slugs in this exceptional rainy spring, overall for gastropods the weather is rather gloomy. According to the International Union for Conservation of Nature, 11% of mollusk species in France are today threatened by intensive agriculture, by the disappearance of their habitats, and of course by climate change.