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In spring, an old gardener’s fancy turns to thoughts of murdering slugs.
There is no romance in the sight of promising crop of seedlings mown down in
their infancy by that pernicious, slimy mollusk with it’s rasping mouthparts
and sticky trail. The little ones are the worst, too. Ugh. Destroy the slug.
Our awful garden marauders are the imported European slugs. Washington’s own banana slug is far more benign (perhaps because it’s scarcer) than the brown, spotted or black lumps of ooze that creep about at night in my yard. In addition, I find that I have far more snails than I used to. These yellow-shelled varmints seem to have migrated north from California to take up residence in my iris. Remember, a snail is just a slug in fancy dress—there’s no difference at all in their appetite for tender young plants.
Traditional English garden wisdom was to rid your place of sluggy things by spreading bran and metaldehyde bait liberally throughout the border. This did kill slugs, but it also harmed too many other creatures to make it the battle plan of choice today. Metaldehyde is very toxic to dogs, toddlers, birds and others who find the bran appealing. The newer slug “baits” contain iron phosphate and are a wiser choice if your goal is to poison the beasts. Please be sure to read the directions carefully and then follow them exactly. Each brand is a little different in its formulation.
But don’t think chemicals are the only route to take. There are many avenues to slug control. You can try to exclude them with barriers of copper, diatomaceous earth, gritty sand or wood ashes. Barriers work best if you have a very small population of slugs and can corral them. No barrier is 100% foolproof. Sometimes I think slugs levitate. I can’t even keep them out of pots on a concrete patio with no easy access to virgin soil.
Next, you can trap them with saucers of beer. Slugs do love beer and come willingly to drown in it. I once picked up a beer can thrown out by a passing motorist and found it contained over a dozen slugs. However, dogs and other wildlife quickly develop a taste for your brew and it’s hard to keep the saucers filled. It’s also rather nasty to have to empty them in the morning. So, like Ruth Stout, I reserve beer for those who can come to the kitchen and ask for it.
What I do is hand pick the nasties. Yes, with the help of disposable surgical gloves, I go out and pick them up to dispose of them once and for all. Some “pickers” drown them in soap or kerosene, but I find that a ziplock bag works fine. At the end of each search, I just zip it shut and place it carefully in the plastic-lined trashbin. To make my pickup job easier, I have set grapefruit rinds on the ground every few feet throughout my vegetable garden. Slugs like to gather in a rotting grapefruit rind and this makes them easy prey. Sometimes I just throw out the whole mess—my compost pile won’t miss a few rinds. Boards will also work as slug-shelters. Or, you can go out at night with a flashlight to pick when the slugs are actively feeding.
At any event, slug control is an ongoing thing. Different methods may work
best in different places (even within one single yard). Watch out for slugs
migrating from the neighbors, especially if there are large weedy places on
your borders. For a big slug problem, try to chose plants with thicker, less
edible leaves—slugs don’t eat my yuccas. Be consistent and be thorough.
You’ll win. Eventually.
Hortsense: Managing plant problems with Integrated Pest Management
