Ugggh. Slugs and snails. Wet spring, nearly daily showers, that's great weather for these nasty creatures.

Ok, I get that they are nature's recycling team first-responders, but there are too many of them!

Does anyone have suggestions? Do I need to rent some ducks? I've read that they like slugs... plenty of protein and oh so juicy :thumbdown:

eww... do they hurt the plants or is it just the yuck factor?

salt on the slugs will kill em. don't know about snails other than crackled eggshells around your plants, it cuts em up so they can't cross em

they eat/shredding the leaves

they love my hosta! pita!!

beer is jar lids attracts them and does the same as salt.
Growing up in California we had lots of them. Ducks took care of them in short order. Maybe rent a duck:)

I remember putting a shallow dish of beer in the garden...they are attracted to it and don't leave the dish...

I hate those nasty things. Ate all my hostas one year.

Ewww Ewww Ewww Better you than me LOL
I hope you can get rid of them soon :D:D:D

LOL

Beer? I'd have to buy an entire brewery. Ok, a whole truckful.

Last year I thought I would try handpicking them. A nice, organic alternative, right?

Went out after supper, armed with a large bucket of soapy water and tongs. Counted as I picked 'em and stuck 'em in the bucket. Lost count after 500. And I did this for nearly a full week, and it made no dent in the population.

Major eewww!

They prefer to eat dying leaves (weeds thrown on the compost heap, the aged leaves of the spring flowering bulbs) but when there are so many slugs and snails, then they start eating everything else, too.

Would have to become VERY close friends with several restaurants that do a brisk breakfast trade...

I have heard that you take a smooth sided container (jar) fill it half full of beer and bury it in the garden at ground level. The slugs crawl in to get the beer and drown. I have never tried it but it wouldn't hurt to give it a go. I would also use a jar the had a screw on lid for easy disposal? Yuck!

Try some beer...it does work...

Oh, my husband said...see if a bar has some old stuff they want to get rid of. He called it skunk beer.

I used Marie Calendar's pie tins, ground level, full of beer. The little buggers drink the beer, get drunk and then drown in it! It's true! LOL

I will tell a somewhat funny story about slugs and beer.

I have a good friend that happens to be Menonite. She was having a terrible slug problem so she went and asked the neighbor if she could buy a couple cans of beer. I guess she gave her a strange look and said "Oh we have a case and wont miss a couple" So my friend put some of the beer out and put the rest in the fridge. Well it didn't take long for gossip to spread that the "Amish girl" was asking for beer. A day or so later it got back to her husband who has a wonderful sence of humor, He just told the busy body that Yha we will need to work on that. He then asked his wife and she laughed and said that next time she better try explaining why she needed it. Then over the weekend the inlaws came in from Pa, needless to say there was a family meeting called about why there was "medicine" in the fridge, You see the four year old told grandma to Not get mommys medicine when she was getting some tea. Maybe it is funnier if you know those involved but you can just imagine the drama this caused.

They take work to get rid of (ask me how I know) They love strawberries.

I used one of the baits to finally reduce the population to a level I can live with.

How do you know? You must have experience! And you are right, they do love strawberries and I am hoping that this year I will get more berries than the slugs do. We shall see... within the week as strawberry season is just starting.

Yes, I've resorted to bait too. Sluggo didn't do much. Deadline works well. But they have so many hiding places... it would be easier if I were starting with an empty field but I'm not.

Yes, baits worked well for me. You can also try encircling your plants with lime or wood ashes as mechanical repellents.
I have used salt, which is gross and beer, also.

Another thing I have done is to give them extra places to hide: put a thick board, flat rock or overturned clay flower pot near the victimized plants. During the day check under these hiding places and dispose of slugs.

www.gardeningknowhow.com has ideas for combating slugs.

I think ground egg shells are good for getting rid of them. Take some empty egg shells & toast them in the oven on low heat; then grind them up & sprinkle around where you see them.

from motherearthnews:I rinse out the shells, let them dry and store them in a coffee can. After the can is full, I put them in an old food processor and grind them up. I sprinkle them around my flowers, veggies, etc. Slugs will not crawl across them. Also, the eggshells provide the mineral benefit of calcium for my garden!

Read more: http://www.motherearthnews.com/Organ...#ixzz1P1n3mchu

another way to get rid of them is to put orange or grapefruit rinds aroung you plants. Something about the citrus oil. used to do this in my strawberry patch to get rid of them. didn't have to worry about the kids or pets getting into something they shouldn't.
Also diatemaceous earth will kill them. buy it in the garden area

from http://www.motherearthnews.com/Organ...ganically.aspx

Remove their habitat by raking up your mulch in spring and composting it. Then, start your garden in open soil and wait until early summer to add a fresh blanket of mulch.

A few years ago, a U.S. Department of Agriculture scientist found that quackgrass contains a substance toxic to slugs. Since then, many backyard slug slayers have experimented with crabgrass cookies, which are made by mixing chopped, dried crabgrass leaves with corn bran, cornstarch and beer. Then, the baits are placed beneath plants, where the slugs eat them and die.

Another option is spraying coffee on plants that are plagued with slugs. Caffeine in any form ? including a few No-Doz tablets mixed with water ? is a slug neurotoxin that will kill these unwanted pests.

When you're down to only a few slugs, you can fall back on the traditional organic control, which is to trap them with beer. Put an inch or so of any beer in a cup, bury it in the garden nearly to the rim and collect your drowned slugs in the morning. Or, put some beer in plastic drink bottles and lay them on their sides in the garden. The slugs will crawl in and drown. Dump them out and start over again every few days.

**there more tips in the comments under the article.

:) Had fun reading this post. Have tried most of the above and they do work. Thought about getting ducks, but then you have duck mess to worry about, which is worse than the slug ewww factor. Not many snails around our garden, but then we have had a drought. Copper wire is 'sposed to work too (but most people hoard it and sell it). If you have some small people around, give them each a bucket and pay 1 cent per head.

Beer really does work.

(A few years ago, a U.S. Department of Agriculture scientist found that quackgrass contains a substance toxic to slugs. ) If this is true I sholdn't have slugs and I have a lot of them.

Yuck!!! Would gross me out! Can't believe u were brave enough to pluck and count!!

Diatamaceous (sp) earth sprinkled around your plants will take care of it. Nice, organic solution.

slugs like beer not sure what the snails like.

Eeeeww!! I can sympathize. When I lived in CT we had slugs all over. I did the beer thing in cans to attract and drown them. It worked but all it did was collect them and they still kept coming. I had a balcony on the 2nd floor and ended up planting ALL of my plants in containers, flowers, veggies and herbs. Good luck, I hope you can get around them somehow.

put out aluminum pie pans with beer, don't know why but it attracks them and they drown. Or there is always slug bait

I AM Mennonite so it was funny to me!!!!!

Ok, now that I'm itching all over, I'm not looking at any more slug pictures. Kill those things!

Yes, this works. They drown themselves. Salt will "dissolve" them, but it's kind of cruel and REALLY yucky and you have to go on a slug hunt and do one at a time. With the dish (make sure it's something you'll want to throw away) you can get many at one time.

diatomaceous earth spread liberally around the plants works well. there is also a powder i've bought (from Gardener's Supply--no affiliation just a satisfied customer over time) that is great. the problem is they eat the veggies and fruit destroying the crop. I also use the beer in a saucer but that is yucky to get rid of. makes me understnad why the French eat them--they're not worth much else and the ones I have are not nice like the escargots I've eaten in restaurants!

I too am looking for the "magic cure-all"!!!! :lol:

The individual hunt is an endless thought. While it may be proactive, it is far from showing progress. Believe me!!

Crabgrass and quackgrass are two totally different weeds. So not sure what the potential truth behind it is? Regardless, most of us work hard to eliminate, or at the best minimize it within our gardens.

About the other food alternatives being placed around .... think of all the other animals they will attract, before you put them in place! And I wonder, will we have drunken cats/dogs after they lap up the beer?

I'm sure there are some "wanted" plants that the snails don't like, ie are toxic or are just not desirable to their palate? Though I haven't figured that one out yet, I do know there are some of my perennials that do not seem to be affected.

As for the mulch .... agree it's probably our worse enemy and encourages the little beasties.

Help is on the way.

fill a gallon jug with

1/4 cup buttermilk

2 cups flour

and fill the rest with water

shake well

put in a spray bottle - shake and spray

Help is on the way.

fill a gallon jug with

1/4 cup buttermilk

2 cups flour

and fill the rest with water

shake well

put in a spray bottle - shake and spray

You will need to watch how much salt you use as it will kill the ground also

Go to Lowes gardening section and get a bag of diatemaceous earth, sprinkle it around the plants. It's a repellent, won't hurt anything else but will repel and sometimes kill the snails.

I think I read that if you put oatmeal around your garden that it expands when they eat it. You can also by products that kill them but I think oatmeal is cheaper. I have the same problem.

Cups of beer will attract them and they drown in it. I use a pet friendly slug/snail killer but it is rather expensive but much less than the vet bill we had one evening at emergency.