Swarming Slaters eating plants - HELP

[Mentally Jones II¾]

Hi,

I have a severe slater problem - they are eating just about everything. At night the ground is crawling with them & they even climb up the plants then eat the leaves off. Sometimes they even chew the stems off at ground level then consume the fallen plants. They've never been this ravenous before! HELP!!

How can I control them without poisons (if possible).

[John Savage]

Your worries haven't started yet. When they've consumed all your plants they're sure to come looking for you.

I'll send you a dozen funnel web spiders if you like; they make short work of slaters. But only one at a time.

If you have plenty of concrete pathway maybe you could go out at night and hoover them up as they cross the paths if they are migrating from bushland into your garden. (But a flamethrower would be more fun.) Or are they coming from within your compost?

Slaters have only short legs, so maybe you could enclose a few most prized plants with a portion of plastic softdrink bottle -- with top and bottom removed and pushed into the soil so slaters can't bulldoze their way under it?

Newsgroups trimmed to the couple I sometimes post to.