T HE BEST REMEDY FOR SLUGS WAS AN END TO THE RECENT RAIN, after 13 or so inches the previous 30 days. But though the drier weather slows them, I am left with a bumper crop of the shell-less mollusks with their voracious hunger and telltales trails of slime. What’s a gardener to do?
Know their habits: Slugs do most of their damage by feeding in evenings and early mornings; they like moist, secretive places better than a place in the sun. Their favorite fodder is often the youngest and most tender seedlings, but they (and their shelled cousins the snails) will eat molds and decaying material and even leathery things like orchid leaves (below), too, not just my Abutilon (above) and hostas. Nothing is safe: foliage, flowers, fruit, and even some seeds are fair game.
Don’t water late in the day, which will only encourage bad behavior, making things moister during play time.
Eliminate hiding places. Wilted or slightly decaying foliage left in the garden can provide perfect hiding places, as it often bends to touch the ground. This week, now that things have dried a bit so I can get into the beds, a more ruthless approach to cutbacks than normal is scheduled, since the extreme rains caused so much excess, often floppy, growth.
Don’t over-mulch. One to perhaps 2½ inches of mulch is desirable; layering on thicker amounts than about 3 inches just invites damp conditions that slugs love, plus it provides a great place to hide.
Set out safe baits or traps. There are self-described “nontoxic” slug baits these days (though research institutions like Cornell use the term “low-toxicity,” which is probably more accurate), like Escar-Go! and Sluggo, based on iron-phosphate formulations. I have never used any, so am without any detail or endorsement to offer. I’m still back in the lay-down-a-board or sink-a-can-of-beer (as in tuna can or shallow plastic deli container) school; half-grapefruit rinds work, too. Seriously, pieces of discarded lumber laid down in areas of heavy infestation and upturned the next morning will yield lots of hiding beasts that can be scraped into a bucket of soapy water.
Other barriers, like copper strips (are you kidding? I would need 20 miles of this) or Diatomaceous earth (not the kind rated for use in pool filters, but the untreated kind for garden use) are also said to be effective, but the latter is scary-dusty (wear a mask) and needs to be reapplied after each rain (again, are you kidding?). My scraps of siding and shingles and trim don’t mind being rained on, and have weathered many years.
Encourage snakes. Many species (including garter snakes) eat slugs. So do salamanders. Walk your property (with a heavy foot!) before firing up the mower, as snakes can’t really hear it and get away in time otherwise. It’s vibrations that signal them to get going, apparently, and avoid being hurt by the machine.
Be brutal. (Take anti-nausea drugs before attempting, as needed, tee hee.) Hand-pick and squash as many as you can, or drown them. A friend who’s somewhat slug-intolerant, even slugicidal, snips them in half with shears. Effective, if brutal. Salt works as well, but at this point I’d need a shaker the size of silo and I could be on patrol with it many hours each day. Trapping (think: beer and boards) is more time-effective.
Love a frog. Or a whole army of them (yes, the correct word for a group of frogs is army). That’s what I am after: an army of frogs. But you already knew of that proclivity of mine.
Hi, Kathy. Hot Lips sounds like just my kind of girl. :)
As for questions about the noise, I love it. Nature’s symphony, no? Tell any neighbors who complain that there are no noise ordinances against the natural world expressing itself.
Sluggo rocks
Time for some chickens or ducks. Fresh eggs, and a lot less slugs.
we have a much smaller space than you do and use the beer and salt methods with pretty good success. I have to share that I think that all of your snake pictures may be helping me a little bit to overcome my phobia. I’m not jumping back from my computer as violently as I used to. We’ll see what happens next time I step on one in the garden! Thank you Margaret!!!
I am convinced that it is slugs that are having lunch and dinner and probably breakfast on my rhubarb leaves! Time to get my remedy out which is to crunch up egg shells – they should have been rinsed and dried for a few days until brittle. I sprinkle the bits and pieces around my hostas and no slugs. It seems the rough edges are not to slugs liking. Have to try it around my rhubarb plants. As a side note, the blue jays love to eat the shell bits so sometimes I’ll put some on my platform feeder as a treat for them.
Sluggo works for me. It is important to use it early in the season when the hostas are just emerging and keep at it periodically all season. Most dogs love beer and mine would lap it up before the slugs could get to it, however his presence has seemed to help with chipmonks and voles and deer.
Have you heard of using crushed eggshells around plants, like hostas, to deter them, I understand that the sharp edges of the shells cut them and they don’t cross over the barrier. Love frogs! Where would one buy them or easily find them to bring and live in ones garden??
Ducks love slugs!
Hi, Amanda. I would love to have poultry or fowl, but worry about wild animals here — so many predators!
Welcome, Doris. How sweet that you give the jays that treat! I should try the trick around vulnerable plants.
Ha! Who knew frogs were so aggressive? If I had an amicable female green frog I’d drive her over to your pond.
Thanks for the stories – a bright spot in my wk!
You are welcome, Viqueen. The males fight like demons, nonstop. Hilarous. So much bravado — no bloodshed.
What adorable critters you have. It’s been twenty years at least since I had a garter snake in my garden. What a precious baby newt! Never have we seen one except for a classroom pet.So fragile-think how threadlike his skeleton is. I’d like to seed my garden with snakes and newts. Maybe I’ll look on line.We have quite a few neighbor cats-I suppose they would hunt them. Please keep showing us your menagerie.
They are digesting whole basil plants in my garden this year. I’ve used the beer with some success and Escar-Go under the hostas but I don’t want to add that to the soil near the herb garden. Thanks for the lumber tip. I am heading out to try that now.
They have made a mess of my pulmonaria! I’ve never seen it this bad. I was going to cut them back this weekend anyway. If I clear that bed to the ground, do you think the slugs will move on, or will they be back when the new growth appears?
Here, too, Lisa — those rough, hairy pulmo leaves are all to pieces here as well. SO WEIRD. Maybe they all took special vitamins this year, these damn slugs?
Went out yesterday evening after the rain to take out the trash, stopping to pick up some weeds I’d thrown down a day before to add to the bag. The slugs, the snails – there were around 30 I could see (though none of the six inch ones). I gave up on Sluggo a while back, though it worked okay. Beer, for them and me after seeing those things.
I need to get out and do a sweep, but I do hate touching them.
I’ve been cutting the slugs in half when I weed for years; somehow it seems fair!
This year with all the rain we’ve had, I see an over abundance of the shelled snails. Yuk! I used to love “escargot” – no more. I pick them off, put them on a stone or other hard surface and step on them with force. The slimy, non-shelled ones? I cut them in half with glee. My biggest problem in my woodland garden are moles, tunneling and providing a free ride for voles. Just yesterday I picked up a handful of cut off leaves from a Dicentra ‘King of Hearts” – there was nothing left below ground. I use MoleMax but can’t put it down enough and even rat poison into the holes which I cover with a large stone or tile. I’m afraid my cat will eat one of those poisoned ones so it’s last resort. Otherwise, Max brings me daily presents of dead moles, voles, mice but a single cat is just not enough to overcome the army of voles.
Have you guys tried coffee grounds around the plants? That works best for me. You can collect a ton of coffee grounds for free from your local coffee shop and spread it around your plants. Slugs seem to hate the acidity of the coffee.
Hi, VY. I haven’t done it (don’t drink coffee — but that recycling from the local place is a good idea!). Thank you.
Wait a minute guys….if you prepare them like escargot, slugs make a delicious escargot-like tasting dish. Yum.
Sieglinde, the obvious answer is to adopt a companion cat for your Max. We have a Max, too, and he is an excellent mouser, as is his sister Missy. (Unfortunately, Max didn’t get the memo to leave the chipmunks alone.)
We used to use Sluggo, with good results, and also broken eggshells. Then our neighbors changed their backyard landscaping to eliminate their grass. Now it’s all perennials and gravel paths. They also added a hidden cistern to collect rainwater. After all those changes suddenly we had far fewer slugs–! (Not complaining …)
I have used the beer-tuna can method with success in the past. Question: where/how do you dispose of the dead ones? those cans can fill up and things get pretty gross after a few days…
I live in New Hampshire and we’ve been having ungodly amounts of rain but I haven’t had a huge problem with slugs. No more than usual, at any rate. My problem is cutworms, every time I go into the garden I discover more death. Lettuces, carrots, arugula, almost an entire row of beets! I have put collars around all of my transplants but the direct sown items are being feasted on. I’m about to put up my row covers and hopefully that will help in the future but I don’t know what to do now. Any ideas? Help!
We have a small pond in our backyard, and when I find slugs or cutworms/caterpillars on any of my plants in the backyard, I just toss those little buggers to thegoldfish . I wonder if that is like steak to them?!
I really don’t care for killing garden pests, all creatures have a place even if we don’t like it, but I can tell you that an inexpensive way to deter slugs is to put down crushed oyster shell. You can purchase it in huge bags from the feed store for very little cost.
Thanks, Patricia; a good suggestion.
Slight swerve here–has anyone else noticed a great increase in the numbers of columbine borers? I normally just pull off the affected leaves, but this year I would need to yank out entire plants!
Dahlink, yes! If I took off all the affected leaves, they couldn’t live. I started many from seed this year and even in pots on my deck they’ve been ruined.Now add the little worms that eat from the edges, and they’ll be finished.
Thanks, Valerie–somehow it’s comforting to know we are not alone, isn’t it?
Even more comforting would be a cure. Even hollyhocks are full of leaf miners this year. Maybe the hollyhock rust will poison the little devils.ha
Bug tea, I learned it from Ruth Stout or the old Organic Gardening magazine, decades ago. Made from slugs the same way as for other garden pests, is effective if yucky. Gather the offenders in a container [use rubber gloves on a rainy day for slugs, tossing them in a bucket and knocking them back in as they climb the sides]. Put them in a blender with some water, and blend until well mixed. The slugs will create a goopy gel. [I know, it takes a strong stomach. Try not to gag!] Add some more water for a soupy consistency if needed. Let steep overnight. STRAIN the mixture so all that remains is the concentrated “tea.” Dilute freely—I don’t remember the percentage being critical—add a few drops of surfactant or dish soap, and spray on the plants affected. Infestation will drop immensely. The bugs end up killing themselves with their own viruses or bacteria; I don’t really remember the why, just the result.
Are all frogs effective as slug removers? Who eats snails? Thanks for any info you may have :)
Hi, Donna. The predators of slugs and snails are many, including invertebrates and vertebrates:
That is from the Carnegie Museum site; more here. My attitude is that the less chemicals I use (I use none) the more diversity I attract and the more intact my little corner of the food chain is, so to speak. Happy to have snakes, frogs, birds, beetles, etc. all eating slugs and snails (and one another I guess too in some cases!).
I do have plenty of garter snakes, but Norton likes to kill them. Bad beagle!