Slugs

[Holly]

I hope this is the right place for this, Im not sure. I have searched the forums for advice, but cant see any, sorry if this is a duplicate.

I HATE the little blighters. I have tried beer traps and egg shells, but I think the beer just attracts more of them to my brassicas as the traps are always full, but my caulies are almost non existant. My aunt has reccomended ground pepper. Any ideas?

Peace. Holly

[gracie88]

Ooh, ooh, I know, "you do not have an excess of slugs, but a dearth of ducks." :D Seriously, if you can have them, nothing else works better (says the girl who is too lazy to try anything else) They can be pretty personable too. :)

[Holly]

Funnily enough, over the last week, since your replies, two of our neighbours ducks, who have been occasional visitors in the past, have been hanging out a lot in our garden.

They have eaten a couple of my runner bean seedlings, but I assume they have been eating more slugs and snails! I have netted or polytunneled all the smaller plants for protection, so now Im just worried about the tadpoles and newts in our pond-although the tadpoles are the biggest monsters I have ever seen this year!

The ducks in question were incubator hatched and hand reared and refuse to stay with the other ducks in her garden- thats fine with me, as my mum doesnt want ducks or chickens as she is scared of them from her experiences of keeping them as a child! We keep chickens at my boyfriends place, and Ill definately encourage them to get a couple of ducks as well.

Thanks for the advice guys.

What do people do with slugs and snails they pick off plants in their garden?

Peace.

[bookwormom]

I agree about ducks being the best means for getting rid of slugs. We had a pet drake (named Daffy ::)) for many years, he was trained to go slug hunting with sweet hubby. Lots of fun. If you put out old boards in the garden, slugs will congregate under them. Beer traps are an expensive way to attract more slugs to your garden. It is the yeast that attracts them, so you can use yeast in water and a little sugar the same way. As for fall, chickens will scratch and unearth any slugnests and eat the eggs. They will look like a little pile of small pearls, sort of.
As for the ones you pick off by hand.,I find the most humane and fastest way to get rid of them is to have a pot of water boiling and scald them. It kills them fast. I lived in slug country and literally picked pounds and pounds of them, after we moved and Daffy was no longer with us. I found that if I killed them, like with a stick, more would come and eat the dead ones. yuck. We found that Daffy did not touch any plants, except he did not care what he stepped on, after a few years we got him a female and she ate plants. We named her after my husband's sister because you could hear her a mile against the wind. One night she dissappeared and we suspect it was a two legged "fox" that got her, she was just too noisy.

[Penny_Plinker]

I use slug poison that you get in Walmart or any garden center. It comes a couple pounds in a bag and you don't have to use that much. I was using WAY too much, and that 6.00 bag wasn't lasting very long. So instead of shaking it out of the bag, i put it in an empty parmison cheese container. Then shake it out of that and it goes a lot further and should last a couple of seasons.

penny

[Holly]

I didnt really want to rersort to chemicals. The whole point of growing my own veg was to know and be in control of what was put on it. However, I am very close to doing so....

We have had the wettest June ever here in Britain, with the most amazing flash floods and many business' sadly affected. The slugs have been having a field day, stripping healthy plants of every fruit, flower and leaf in my garden. I actually cried when I went to check it out last week. Every cucumber plant gone, half my beans destroyed and all the courgette flowers and fruits eaten. The little buggers!

[333]

Peace,

An old gardener friend of mine suggests his remedy of a saucer of beer, or two, depending on how over run your are. It seems they cant deny their urge to par take and die almost instantly. Then of course he suggested ducks. I have seen his beer fest and could not believe the amount of slugs drawn and dispatched.

333

[DM]

My cousin buries a milk jug so the top is flush with the ground level... He then pours some beer in the jug, and the slugs crawl in and fall to the bottom.... He says it holds a LOT of slugs.... and i bet it does...

I only had them bad one year, and i found some poision dad had around here and used it... Normally they aren't around my gardens much untill late in the year, and then only if it's on the wet side do i have a real problem....

DM

[rae-dean]

i use salt on them. :-[poor little slugs.

[reyecat]

we put them in our compost.... once there... they don't want to leave, it's a haven of rotten rest for the crawly weary bunch.

Beer traps. if you empty them everyday they are at least going there instead of the plants.... no? We used beer yeast (from the brew store), sugar, flour and water in ours. didn't seem to attract more than we already had coming and at least they were going into the traps and dying happy rather than eating my plants.... just empty them every day until the scourge dies down.

[Shamrock1121]

I've used copper strapping (a product found in the plumbing department of hardware stores) with pretty good success. If sluggs get in your potted plants, just put a ring of copper around the pot. Place a ring of copper around your hastas, etc... -Karen