In my humble opinion, the only effective method, not involving a lot of time, are slug pellets, I know I,ll get a lot of comments saying how bad they are, but they WORK. DEREKM

I find slugs can ignore pellets. For me, nothing beats going out into the garden at night with a torch in hand and boots on feet, but getting the slime off afterwards can take a lot of scrubbing. Vinyl gloves may be the answer to that. You'll need to repeat the cull from time to time however, and it works best on a drizzly warm night.

Encourage Hedgehogs and Frogs they do wonders.

A friend of mine swears by wine corks, because they don't like crawling over anything that moves. (Now there's an excuse!)

That would please my daughter OJ lol

Slugs don't like the smell of coffee apparently. Dispose of your fresh coffee grains over the area most likely to be attacked. Also porridge oats are pretty good and don't poison the wildlife. When they digest them, the oats swell and the slug basically explodes. I have used this method with some success.

Wine corks? Well I will certainly try that and have plenty to scatter - not because I am a secret drinker but I always keep the corks for some reason. Must have a bucketfull at least and had no idea what to do with them.Thanks Oji. Frogs I have Drc but not hedgehogs because too many badgers.

I've tried porridge oats - no exploded slugs, and coffee grounds - the slugs just went for the plants as normal.

I find the most effective slug deterrent is 'Catsan' cat litter !..Though very white to start with it does go dull after a while, but even after getting wet it still seems to remain effective, plus it contains nitrogen so the plants grow well too (but only plants that like nitrogen of course) .It doesn't appear to have any nasty chemicals in it but not sure I would use it round food plants just in case !

Try copper slug tape this works for me wrap it around any pots/tubs and use old plastic juice bottles with the tape wraped around at the base of plants in the ground

Doesn't the Catsan litter encourage neighbouring cats to visit the plants Judy?

Never had that problem. I have two cats and even they have never used the litter round the plants, preferring instead to use the soil lol !