Raised Beds & Copper Tape

So I have an overgrown jungle of an allotment that I need to tackle. Now that I have some chance of getting up there, I need to get it under control. But how? And those damn slugs!

I've had an idea, and that idea is raised beds with copper tape around them. My brother in law got some pallets for me, which between my husband and I have been dismantled (not as easy as it sounds!), and slowly put back together as squares for raised bed borders.

It's taking me about 1-2 hours to dig out the weeds for the 1m sq area, to get the edging in, and to get the copper tape around the bed. It's quite time consuming, but if it works, I'm a happy bunny!

The idea behind this is that:

• the raised bed creates a nice well defined area to work in
• it may hopefully stop some weeds blowing in, as it is a little higher
• the copper tape should 'sting' the slugs, an therefore deter them from coming in to eat MY booty!

Anyway, I hope it works. So far, my lettuces are largely untouched. They have been in the ground for 6 weeks now, and on one visit after a hard rainfall I found a load of little slugs and 2 big slugs, but other than that they haven't been munched. On that day, I also noticed a patch were the tape had come away from the wood. Hope that isn't going to be a problem.....