Warm damp weather is ideal for a slug, and that's exactly the type of conditions slugs will find around your vegetables and shrubs at this time of year. It's time to go on patrol and weed out the good from the bad.

Professor William Symondson from Cardiff University's School of Bioscience says that Britain is the slug capital of the world owing to the relatively cool damp summers and warmish wet winters which allow a broad range of slug species to be active year round.

Typical plants that are high on a slugs preferred menu are vegetables such as Lettuce, and plants like the Hosta, but not all slugs are bad guys. Some slug species are beneficial to the garden, tidying up the garden as they prefer to feed on rotting vegetation.

As tempting it is to reach for a slug poison to eradicate the problem, it is likely that beneficial slugs will be killed along with the unwanted species. Additionally the overuse of slug control chemicals can have a knock-on effect on the predators that control slug populations naturally.

Visit Professor Symondson's slug control website for more information and a guide to identifying and controlling the slugs in your garden.

Visit the 4scapes shop for a range of pest control products, including slug control.