Slugs can be a nuisance in late summer as their breeding season has just finished so there are more of these critters around searching for garden plants to feast upon. 

It can be frustrating dealing with slugs but there is a natural way to deal with them rather than putting down poisonous pellets which can harm local birds, hedgehogs and neighbourhood cats. 

Sprinkling crushed eggshells around your plants to act as a barrier is a very popular gardening method to keep slugs away as these pests cannot crawl over it without hurting themselves. 

However, Matt Peskett, a gardener and founder of Grow Like Grandad has shared that eggshells have not worked for him and that there is a better way to keep slugs out of your garden for good. 

Matt said: “If I had a pound for each time I heard somebody recommend crushed egg shells as a slug and snail barrier I’d be rich. The problem is, it’s mostly a load of old cobblers which never ever gave my plants any kind of protection whatsoever.”

Matt has done a series of experiments around his garden to see what works best to stop slugs from eating plants and discovered that it is best to combine a dry powdery substance with rose thorns. 

He said: “In my tests, snails will not cross a barrier of dry fine powdery ‘stuff’ – it’s pretty obvious that it sticks to them, they can’t get any traction to climb over it but the granules must be small.” 

You can use coffee grounds, flour, talcum powder, soot, wood ash, or oatmeal but Matt discovered that gypsum was the best repellant for snails. 

All you have to do is pour a two-centimetre barrier around your plants and slugs will not be able to reach them. 

Not only will snails find it difficult to crawl after being coated in the substance but the dry substance will also soak up the moisture from the snails which will disrupt their movement or even damage them.

However, while using a dry substance to deter snails is effective it can only work when it is not raining or windy which makes it quite unreliable. 

Instead, save any rose thorns from the next time you prune or do any maintenance on rose flowers and use them as a barrier around your plants.

Matt said: “It turns out that a wall of horizontal short thorns is neither edible nor crossable. Trust me I watched the snails with their tiny little mouths trying to demolish thorns and failing.

He added: “Wearing thick gloves cut them into short straight, leafless stems and build complete barriers around the base of your plants, snails can’t cross them.”

According to Matt, he found that the best solution to keep slugs out of his garden and stop them coming back was to use both rose thorns and gypsum as a dry substance around his plants. 

Matt said: “I favour a dual approach to plant protection using both a powdery substance AND bramble stems. The powdery substance is gypsum which in tests was by far the best repellent to snails and inedible. 

“Gypsum contains calcium and sulphur which is also good for your plants, it helps to condition soil and therefore has an added fertiliser benefit for use as a snail barrier. “

All you need to do is place a flat and dry layer of gypsum around your plants, making sure the gypsum layer is at least two centimetres wide, and then place the rose thorn brambles on top. 

This will be the “perfect gastropod plant protector” according to Matt and after much testing, he found it was the most effective natural gardening method to stop slugs from eating plants.