Imagine you are out in your bare feet, you need to get to the nice juicy strawberries on the other side of the garden.
Some delightful soul has sprinkled a handful of tacks, some sharp edged pieces of broken glass or even set up a bed of nails for *@*? sake.
Set up a barrier between your pride and joys and the slug habits.
Copper tape
Copper tape works (so I’m told) by reacting with the slime on the slug’s foot to generate an electric current, a sort of self powered electric fence.
All great unless the slugs in question are able to reach over the foil without touching it (following a fallen leaf or twig for example). One way to sort this to use tape with a raised serrated edge.
Eggshells
Here you crush egg shells, breaking them up and sprinkling them around your plants.
All well and good but as you are looking to create a physical barrier, a bed of sharp eggshell edges, you need a lot of shells. Really this is probably only really viable for seed trays.
Grit / course sand
What you are trying to do is create a rough surface that is uncomfortable for the slug to traverse and costs them a lot of slime / moisture. This is probably best as a top layer on the top of plantpots, but with any physical barrier, you are going to have to check regularly that there are not bridges over your barrier to allow the slug to get in.
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Bark
Often you will layer bark over some weed control membrane, it looks attractive, is relatively durable and is not too expensive, especially if you buy in bulk.
The slugs love the membrane you put under the bark as it protects them from predators and helps keep the soil they live in moist, but they don’t like the rough edges of bark chippings, it is uncomfortable to cross.
So make sure when laying the membrane and bark you don’t inadvertently provide the slugs with a secret tunnel to your hostas.
Seaweed
This is really a hybrid between a barrier and a chemical control.
Great for seedlings, you can sprinkle some seaweed powder around your seedlings (basically nutrients for your growing seedlings combined with salt which the slugs hate). You are going to have to renew this on a regular basis. We suggest you try this on a small patch to see if it works in your garden before wider scale deployment.
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Brambles
Blackberries are great, especially when combined with apples in a pie, but they can be an invasive pain.
Now you can put them to good use, when you cut them back, save the stems, remove the leaves, and create a spiky wall around your brassicas. These work best of you use multiple stems, the ones with many smaller thorns work best, but remember you should remove the leaves so they don’t act as a bridge.
Image: Bundesarchiv, Bild 102-12696 / CC-BY-SA 3.0 [CC BY-SA 3.0 de (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/de/deed.en)%5D
Eaten by Slugs 
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