Sir, – Your gardening correspondent Fionnuala Fallon is an excellent communicator on all gardening matters and I look forward to reading her piece every Saturday.
However, on April 23rd she advocated using sharp secateurs to snip slugs found in the garden in half.
Ugh! Surely they should be deterred and not destroyed to encourage biodiversity. Some eat and damage living plants, but many species such as the black slug also eat decaying material such as rotting leaves and dung. The leopard slug, for example, eats dead plants as well as other slugs. The yellow garden slug eats fungi and lichens. And, of course, slugs are eaten by frogs and hedgehogs. – Yours, etc,
PADDY MADDEN,
READ SOME MORE
Straffan,
Co Kildare.