Busy Lizzies are beautiful vibrant coloured flowers with a soothing fragrance that adds colour to otherwise dull bets. If you’ve planted these beautiful flowers, your first concern would be if slugs. So, do slugs eat busy lizzies or not?
Yes, slugs will eat busy Lizzies and can completely devour young busy Lizzies. Busy Lizzies aren’t a favourite of slugs; slugs will only eat them when there isn’t anything good to eat.
When you put a new plant in your garden, you want it to grow healthy, so you care for and look after it, but one obstacle in the garden is pests, and they can make the life of a gardener very difficult – among pests, the worst ones are slugs.
Slugs are soft-bodied molluscs. They’re slimy and slow but deadly to a garden plant as they have an opportunistic diet, meaning they will eat anything they find.
Busy Lizzies are also called impatiens and are annual plants that grow small, pretty vibrant coloured flowers from mid-summer to winter. These flowers aren’t a favourite meal for slugs, but slugs will eat them if they can’t find anything else to eat.
Busy Lizzies are like a plan B for slugs regarding food.
For young, freshly grown, busy Lizzies, slugs can be a threat as they often completely eat them, wiping the flowers out, giving them no time to grow.
Slugs are notorious pests for damaging flowers by wiping out their foliage, fruit, and flowers, and if there isn’t anything that a slug likes in your garden, it will target your busy Lizzies.
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Do Slugs Eat All Bedding Plants?
Slugs can cause a lot of mayhem in gardens and can make your life miserable by devouring all the plants. Slugs love eating the plants that you planted with care and effort; all types of plants, including bedding plants, are at threat of being devoured by slugs.
Luckily, there are some types of bedding plants that you can put in your garden that slugs will not eat.
You may be wondering how there can be plants that slugs will avoid eating as they’re omnivorous, opportunistic eaters, but there are always certain types of plants that pests, including slugs, will avoid. Unfortunately, there are only a couple of types to choose from.
Which Bedding Plants are Slug Safe?
There are several types of bedding plants that slugs will not eat, and rather avoid eating.
Begonias
Begonias have thick rubbery leaves that most slugs dislike and would rather avoid eating. Slugs will only eat begonias if there isn’t anything to eat, but most often, this doesn’t happen, and slugs often avoid these plants and will rather eat other plants with thinner leaves.
These slug-resistant plants like to be grown in partial sun and are suited to baskets and containers, but you can also plant them in borders.
Fuschia
Fuschia plants are very easy to grow; they can be grown in baskets, pots, and borders. These plants are categorized as tailing, bushy or upright that like full sun or partial shade.
They’re also easy to propagate, and slugs completely avoid these plants, and there haven’t been any instances where slimy pests have eaten these plants.
Foxgloves
Foxgloves are perennials, biennials or can also be annuals. These plants have beautiful bell-shaped flowers on their tall, swaying stems.
These plants look stunning but are poisonous if eaten by humans and animals. This is also a reason why slugs avoid these plants.
Geraniums
Pelargoniums are drought and heat-tolerant evergreen perennial species. These are different from perennial Hardy Geraniums and are completely separate genus.
Pelargoniums are easily grown, require less maintenance, and are disease and pest free.
How Do You Protect Busy Lizzies from Slugs?
Some bedding plants are slug resistant, but that doesn’t mean that all bedding plants would be safe against slugs; there are still some types of plants that slugs can eat.
To protect such plants, you can do several things to secure them from slugs and other pests.
Prickly Barrier
Slugs are fragile squishy soft-bodied animals that can get hurt from a surface that’s even a little sharp.
You can use items like crushed eggshells and pine needles to make a barrier around the bedding plants you want to secure from slugs.
Coffee Grounds
Several everyday household items can deter slugs; one such item is coffee grounds. Slugs don’t like coffee grounds because the smell is bitter for slugs, so they will avoid any area with coffee grounds.
So, to deter slugs from bedding plants, you can sprinkle some coffee grounds around the plants. Be careful, though, as coffee grounds can be toxic to pets, so ensure no pet is near the bedding plants.
Inviting in Slug Predators
Slugs may look gross to you, but to many animals in the wild, they’re a means of sustenance.
If your garden is covered with a fence, you can cut a hole big enough for any hungry hedgehogs to venture into your garden and eat all the pesky slugs.
Handpicking
Handpicking slugs can seem like a disgusting option, but it’s a very easy one.
Put on gloves and water a specific area in your garden; now, at night, take a flashlight with you and start picking up any slugs you see and dispose of them. Slugs come out at night to eat, so doing this at night is recommended.
FAQs
If you have more questions about slugs and their eating habits, then these FAQs might be interesting:
Do Slugs Eat Busy Lizzy Seedlings?
Yes! This is when busy lizzies are at their most vulnerable. You should avoid planting busy lizzy seedlings out if slugs are prolific in your garden. They will not survive!
Are Busy Lizzies a Trap Plant for Slugs?
Although slugs might eat busy lizzies, they’re not a favourite plant for them. Instead, they resort to consuming busy lizzies if there’s nothing else to eat.
