I have had several readers e-mail me asking what is eating their plants. They never see any bugs, but their cabbage and lettuce look like swiss cheese.
Slugs usually live in dark damp areas during the day, and then come out at night and eat your plants. That is why you don’t usually see what is eating your plants. So how do you deal with slugs? Well, if you are using organic methods, you don’t want to use poison that can also get into your foods. So, here are some natural methods to control slugs.
1. Crush up egg shells and place them around your plants. The sharp edges help to deter slugs from your plants. The shells will actually cut the slugs, which can cause them to die.
2. Water your garden in the mornings. Slugs are attracted to wet soil, the surface will have time to dry during the day before slugs come out at night.
3. Place copper wires around your garden or plants. The strips need to be at least 2 inches. When the slugs touch copper it causes a toxic reaction, and they won’t climb over it.
4. Look around your garden. Slugs like to stay under damp wood. If you have pieces of wood near your garden, flip the wood over and kill the slugs. Even, if there is no wood around, place a piece of wood near your garden. The slugs will go under it at night, and can go out in the morning to kill the slugs.
5. Place seaweed around the plants. (Make sure the seaweed is not touching your plants.) Seaweed is salty which slugs want to avoid because it dehydrates and kills them. When the seaweed dries, it is rough, and slugs don’t want to climb over it.
6. I have not tried this method, since we don’t drink coffee, but some people will sprinkle their coffee ground around the plants as a deterrent. The coffee grounds should be caffeinated, since it is the caffeine that the slugs don’t like. I wouldn’t use a lot of coffee grounds, since coffee is pretty processed.
7. One of the oldest ways to trap slugs is using beer. Slugs are attracted to beer. Just place the beer into a shallow container above the soil. (There are good insects in your soil, and you want to keep them.) The slugs go into the beer and get trapped. I haven’t tried this method, since we don’t buy beer, but I know that many of my friends have had success with this method.
What method do you use to control slugs?
For non-beer drinkers, you can take a shallow container and mix yeast, sugar and water and leave that out for the slugs to drown in.
I’m going to try the eggshells tonight also. Otherwise, I’ll continue to have a fine crop of slugs and squash leaves but no edible squash.
What a great idea, Brighid! Thanks for the tip! Rene
I have heard of another way to controll slugs, and it makes sense. Place a board in your garden to attract the slugs. The slugs will stay under the board and during the day you can pull up the board and get them.
When I was a kid my mom would send me out to the garden with the salt shaker, flip over the wooden planks, which made our walkway, and sprinkled salt over the slugs. It would kill them instantly.
hey admin thanks for excellent and easy understandable publish i adored your weblog web site seriously much bookmarked also
some genuinely superb info , Sword lily I found this.
Excellent article admin! i bookmarked your world-wide-web webpage. i’ll seem ahead should you could have an e-mail record including.
oh my god superb post admin will check out your weblog generally