Gardeners often feel they face an epic battle with slugs and snails, and despair when the slimy gastropods munch through their carefully-tended vegetable patches.

The Royal Horticultural Society has discovered that slugs have won the war against gardeners and their home remedies, after testing five home remedies out on their lettuces over the summer.

While most horticulturalists have their own favourite slug-busting technique, with many debating the merits of wood mulch versus wool pellets, the charity has discovered they are all of little use.

The scientists at RHS found copper tape, horticultural grit, pine bark mulch, wool pellets and egg shells were shown to make no difference when applied to lettuce, with gastropods inflicting the same damage to those treated with the remedies as without.

They sowed 108 lettuces at the charity’s John MacLeod Field Research Facility in Wisley and treated them with alternate control methods, including no control at all - and found there was no discernable difference between those with no deterrent and those with used a home remedy.

Dr Hayley Jones, Entomologist at the Royal Horticultural Society and lead researcher said: “Our study reveals that many gardeners could be wasting time and money by turning to home remedies in a bid to protect their prized plants. With the likes of egg shells, barks and mulch so far proving no discernable deterrent to slugs and snails we would recommend using proven formulas like nematode biological control if the damage is just too much to bear.”