Helix tosta: a slug nightmareby A.B.
I'd like to tell you of my experience of dealing with a plague of slugs last year.
I'm a herb gardener in Isarwinkel and my herb garden is surrounded by meadows, which seem to be full of slugs. It seemed to me like they can't resist feasting on my plants, attracted by the lovely scents.
After watching the TV programme on homeopathy for slugs, I immediately ordered the remedy
Helix tosta X6 from Narayana and here's what happened.
My daily ritual starts at 20:30, when I spend an hour gathering slugs; around 200 to 300 a day!!! Where on earth are they all coming from and what would happen if I stopped collecting them all? I usually go straight to the “attractor” plants, such as costmary, horseradish, absinthe wormwood, where I regularly find up to 30 slugs gathered around a single plant.
So, this is what I tried: as always, I had made own seedlings of pumpkin and courgette (zucchini) plants, and now, it was time to plant them, and invariably, they would be pounced upon by the slugs. I planted them out in the late afternoon, and as usual, at exactly 21:00, the snails came marching across from all directions… straight to my new young plants.
It was now or never! Would I again lose all these precious plants in a single night? Slug poison has always been taboo in my herb garden. I just had absolute confidence in the homeopathic remedy, having prepared it in advance in the afternoon. I had dissolved the granules in a small spirit glass, put this in a larger glass, stirring the liquid carefully in a clockwise direction, and then added it to 10 litres of water. I then put this mixture in a large sprayer, which I use to spray the area around each young plant – only on the earth, not on the plants themselves.
Since the mixture goes a long way, I was also able to spray a proper “no-go line” along the edge of the garden, where the slugs came across from the meadow to invade my herb garden at night. Next morning, I was obviously very curious and at first light, I looked down from the balcony to the vegetable patch.
Things looked very promising, and indeed, on closer inspection I was totally astounded – not a single bite on the leaves! This state of affairs lasted at least three weeks, at which time I noticed that the slugs were gradually starting to come back, so I repeated the spraying that evening. I only sprayed a total of four times during the entire growing season. I am simply delighted with these results and have been telling everyone I can about Christiane Maute's book “
Homeopathy for
Plants” and the remedy “Helix Tosta”.
The other topics covered in the book were also very interesting but I haven't needed to try any other recommendations. This is because I use micro-organisms, with which I strengthen my plants by improving the soil through recycling, so that the plants are already strong enough on the whole. This year, I plan to start some trials on the topic of “ants”. So, I reckon I will soon be regaling my numerous visitors with tales of homeopathy for ants!
A.B., Upper Bavaria, Germany
Keywords: slug infestationRemedies:
Helix tosta.