SLUGS and SNAILS and OLD WIVES' TALES

In this extract from his book The Good Slug Guide, author Jo Kirby casts doubt on who the natural predators of slugs and snails really are. Have gardeners been getting it all wrong?

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Back in 2014, it was casually suggested to me that an hour or two spent seeking out information on natural controls for slugs and snails in gardens might prove interesting. As a keen gardener myself, this struck me as an excellent idea, but pretty much all I could find in the gardening media was the old, well-worn mantra of 'encourage hedgehogs, frogs and toads in the garden'. Nowhere could I find hard evidence that these creatures really were useful. I began to wonder if the advice was just an easy, seductive phrase that had gained general acceptance through repetition and had no basis in fact. Were hedgehogs, frogs and toads really useful in the garden? Nobody seemed to know.

That could have been the end of it, but I decided to look deeper. Important academic works surfaced almost immediately. They were full of useful information that had never made it as far as the gardening media, and it pointed in new and entirely unexpected directions.