Yuck.
I spent two hours in our garden last night handpicking over 500 dang SLUGS from our precious garden. Seriously, they were EVERYWHERE and relentless! I don’t remember having a slug infestation in our garden growing up? Where on earth did they all come from? So gross. I might reconsider my love of all things clam/oyster/mollusky after this adventure.
ANYWHO—since I’m still pretty new to this gardening stuff in my adult life I turned to the Google for answers.
The Google told me many things about my enemy, the Slug.
-MOIST, COOL, DARK! Water garden in the morning instead of evening. Get rid of leaves on plants that touch the soil so they don’t have hiding places.
-BEER TRAPS! Set up containers that stick about an inch off of the ground and fill with beer. Apparently the slugs love the frat party smell and will head to the nearest trap, get drunk and die.
-COFFEE! I guess they have the same vices as humans, coffee grounds are bad for slugs!
-EGGSHELLS, HUMAN HAIR, COPPER PAN CLEANERS, SPIKEY MULCH, SAND! The little slimy things don’t like the texture…so they will avoid.
-WOODEN BOARDS they collect under them and then VOILA! YOu have bunches of them to handpick or…
-SALT! If you salt the darn slugs and they melt? ICK!!! (Have to be careful not to salt the plants or get soil too salty though…)
-SLUGGO Has anyone tried this product? “a unique blend of iron phosphate and bait additives” hmmmm?
We will see…for now I’m picking by hand, watering only in the morning and planning on holding keg parties for the little suckers. They are devouring our beans and peppers. Boo.
What do you do to control slug problems? I’ve been reading that they are exceptionally bad this year…
Mike and I went camping this weekend and it rained last night so when we packed up this morning there were slugs ALL OVER the bottom of the tent -_- I hate them
Ew! I would have been freaking out! I kept thinking they were crawling on me when I was trying to sleep last night!