Before you reach for slug pellets: are slugs really the cause?
Bait only works against the animal that is actually eating, so the first job is to name the culprit instead of guessing it.
Diagnose my plant now →The evening you find the leaves shredded
You walk out after a damp night and the young lettuce is gone, the hosta looks like lace, the seedlings have been cut off at the ground. Something is eating, it eats fast, and it eats in the dark. The obvious conclusion is slugs, and the obvious next step is a trip to the garden centre for pellets with metaldehyde.
The trouble is that many other things leave damage that looks almost identical. Caterpillars feed at night too. Vine weevil adults cut neat bays out of leaf edges. Cutworms sever stems below the surface. Frost, hail and fungal spots that dry out and fall through all produce holes that a worried owner reads as feeding damage. If you treat the wrong cause, you lose the plants anyway, and you have put a plant protection product into your soil for nothing.
Professional growers face the same question with more at stake, and public bodies have a further one: some organisms are notifiable under EU rules, and a wrong first guess costs time that matters. Naming what is actually there is the part that decides everything after it.
What points to slugs, and what points away from them
Slug feeding tends to leave irregular holes both inside the leaf blade and along the edge, with ragged rather than clean margins, and it usually appears after rain or heavy dew. Dried slime trails on leaves, pots, paving or the soil surface are the strongest single clue. Seedlings that vanish overnight and soft leaves stripped down to the veins fit the picture well.
Points away from slugs: droppings on the leaf, feeding that continues in full sun, a sharply cut leaf edge with no slime, damage confined to one plant species while the neighbours are untouched, or spots with a coloured margin that later break out into holes. Those belong to caterpillars, beetles, weather damage or a fungal disease, and none of them respond to bait.
Dr. Phyto works through exactly these distinctions with you. You send a photo, answer a few follow up questions about weather, watering, location and when the damage appeared, and you get a named diagnosis with a stated confidence level, never a result presented as settled.
Metaldehyde: what to settle before anything is spread
Authorisation of active substances is decided at European level and then implemented country by country, and the status of metaldehyde has changed over time. Whether a product containing it may legally be sold and used where you live is not something a website can tell you. Check the official register of your national plant protection authority, or the EU pesticides database, before you buy or apply anything.
If a product is authorised for your country, only the authorised crops, doses and application methods apply. Off label use is not an option. For anything you intend to harvest, the pre harvest interval and residue rules are part of the decision, not an afterthought, and no spraying or spreading advice is complete without them.
Dr. Phyto does not name products and does not recommend a specific active substance. It tells you what is wrong with the plant, how sure it is, and what the treatment plan looks like in order and by date. For the choice of an authorised product, talk to an agronomist in your country, to your national authority, or ask us directly.
What you get back
A named diagnosis with a confidence level, an explanation of what is actually happening in the plant, and a step by step, dated treatment plan grounded in a verified European knowledge base rather than the guesswork of a general chatbot. Home gardeners, commercial growers in viticulture, fruit, greenhouses and market gardening, municipalities and public bodies, and agronomists who want a fast second opinion all use the same route in.
If a plant is beyond saving, Dr. Phyto says so. No recovery is ever promised. And where a finding points towards an organism that is notifiable under Regulation (EU) 2019/2072, the plan says clearly that the competent national authority has to be informed, and that affected material must not simply be moved, sold or disposed of on your own initiative.
How do I tell slug damage from caterpillar damage?
Look for slime trails and for feeding that happens overnight or after rain, with ragged holes inside the leaf blade. Caterpillars usually leave droppings and often feed by day as well. A photo taken in good light, together with a few answers about weather and timing, is normally enough for Dr. Phyto to separate the two and to say how confident it is.
Is metaldehyde still authorised where I live?
That is decided nationally and it has changed over the years, so we do not state it for you. Check the official register kept by your national plant protection authority, or the EU pesticides database, and follow only the authorised use and dose listed there.
Will slug pellets help if slugs are not the cause?
No. Bait acts on the animal it is made for. If the damage comes from caterpillars, weevils, cutworms, frost or a fungal disease, spreading pellets changes nothing except that a plant protection product ends up in your garden without reason.
Can Dr. Phyto tell me which product to buy?
No, and deliberately so. Authorisations differ from country to country and naming a product without checking that would be a legal problem. We give you the diagnosis, the confidence level and the plan, and point you to your national authority or an agronomist for the product decision. You can also ask us directly.
Can you promise my plant will recover?
No. Nobody can, and we do not. You get a diagnosis with a stated confidence level and a dated plan, and if the plant is beyond saving you will be told that instead of being sold hope.