Home Forums Miscellaneous Topics Rural Living Sonzabichin garden slugs!

Guessing this has been discussed to death, but I 'm not inclined to go a-hunting thru the back pages to find something. Came home from a couple week trip to find half of the raised bed garden chewed up, knew right away it was slugs, been there b-4. Went to the recycle bin & dug out tuna cans etc., set them around and 1/2 filled them with beer. YES, it broke my heart to do so. Found a can of some weird bacon flavored beer that I had bought to try, pahtooowie!!, hated it, so I used that and somebody's left over NA. Slimey little bastids are apparently somewhat fussy, they swarmed to the bacon beer & turned up their noses at the NA. Who knew? Put mini caps over the beer traps to keep the rain out of the cans, and I run the trap line every day...
SO ANYWAY.. any other suggestions to get rid of the buggers, or at least slow 'em down? This isn't a matter of a 1/2 dozen of the wanna-be-snails-but-don't-own-a-shell, we're talking slug quantities here. It's a fenced in garden, works on the deer/rabbits/chucks/etc., but obviously the slugs are not respecting that, anything to spread around outside it to kill or stop the SOB'S or anything better in the beds?

Thanks all!

Never heard of a slug trap before.

Learn something new every day!

Hope you get 'em all!

Escargot! (kinda)

Local cooperative extension office?

As a last resort (maybe first?) google. Must be garden clubs, forums, etc online.

I have heard ducks will eat them, maybe geese also.

RBB... Escargot! ....I'll eat most anything, but believe I'll hafta take a pass on this delicacy!

Mike, tried Google before, just a lot of lame advice like sprinkling salt on them or laying boards out on the grass for them to crawl under when it's hot, then salting them, my beer traps seem like an easier option. I was hoping someone might have a remedy like "Super Slug Napalm" or similar.

Diatamacious earth sprinkled heavily in a line around the entire bed. They die when they crawl over it. Crushed eggshells are a cheaper version but it takes a lot of them.

Hydrated lime in a line around the bed will do much the same thing at a much cheaper price. But clean it up and get it out of the garden eventually, as it is too much for your soil health.

Get rid of any mulch, spread your plants out farther apart, and cultivate the beds down bare dirt. Slugs won't cross dry, dusty topsoil and hate the sun. If you till the soil only about an inch deep every few days, it breaks the capillary action to the lower soil and functions like a mulch anyway.

Salt shaker, it is cruel but cool, all at the same time.

If you use salt, do you use pepper too??

I saute them in butter.

DD Thanks for the advice, I'll try the lime. Since it's raised beds, the lime would be on the wood mulch around the beds and wouldn't hurt the soil. This is the first year I've mulched around the plants with straw to help hold moisture in the ground, I've pulled it away from the leafy plants now. Seems fine around tomatoes, slugs seem to leave them alone.

Rbb Buy lots of butter, I'm sending you a 50# package of fresh frozen slugs, bon appétit!

Yup, the mulch is killing you. Straw mulch is like slug heaven.

Never heard of a slug trap either. We only live one place that we had slugs and salt around the fence stopped them.