Does anyone have any good ways to deter slugs? Preferably without using slug pellets.... My strawberries are looking really good and healthy but I have noticed quite a few leaves are being eaten and there are slug trails on them
The traditional remedy is ground razor blades not eggshell as eggshell will raise the pH of your soil. For those who don't shave try broken glass.
Slugs laugh at wool of all kinds.
Push toothpicks into the soil about halfway with the pointy end up. These micro punji sticks will clean your fingernails as you pick the berries too. Don't lean down to smell the flowers though.
My dad used to use those little plastic tubs you get Chinese food in, sink them flush to the soil near his veggies and fill em with cheap beer combined with hand picking them from all over the garden at night.
If slugs are a huge problem, you need to 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. You still may have problems because your soil may be well stocked with slug eggs. A few years ago, a U.S. Department of Agriculture scientist found that crabgrass 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. The baits are then 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 you¹re 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.
if you can or can find a way... get some COPPER "shavings" and place them around the plants upon which you wish to save. you can usually find or buy copper shavings at lumber/timber yards; metal 'carving' stores; best bet, tho' is through an art supply store; even a frame shop is sure to have what you need!! ---- if you go to one or all of those places, you can tell them your sad story, even bring a leaf or 2 with the place(s) you go to and lay it on thickly. OR!! BEST THING of ALL? get up at dawnlight or e'vning light; grab a pair of tongs which REALLY close tightly; and a 3lb. EMPTY can of coffee in which you fill with approximately 1/2 of the can with salt water; ratio of salt:water... 2/3 table salt to 1/3 tap water. when you find tracks of the slugs, use the tongs OR a garden-gloved hand to pick up EVERY slug you see and place DIRECTLY into salt water!! do NOT for ANY REASON fill the can with PLAIN water, dump slugs/snails into THAT and then go to dump can of plain water, slugs/ snails onto nearest concrete or cemented pavement and try to stomp the life out of them..... because, GET THIS: ALL SNAILS &/OR SLUGS lead a double life: they are ALL hermaphrodites--meaning they are all male and female at the same time AND the females carry their eggs which are encased in a plastic-type of casing which is ALMOST impossible to break unless you have a KNIFE with you to CUT INTO the casings!!!!!!!!!!!! on the other hand, the salt water "smothers" them--cuts off their ability to survive: TOTALLY!!!!!!!
PHEW!!!!!!!! i sure hope this answers your question(s)?!!!?
warm regards from "suddenly" zone 6 in western new hamster.
As I understand it, it's not drowning, it's the yeast. I'd always thought that the yeast acts as a poison for slugs and snails so you dont' need huge amounts of it. The dregs from the bottom of a bottle of beer that has been drunk is enough. I've never used a lot of beer and still the snails have died (and not whilst in the the liquid, but near it). Now you've got me wondering about what it is about the beer and yeast spreads that works.
Do you mean the little "fun-guys", themselves, or chemicals that they produce, like ethanol? Unlike Coopers, I'm not familiar with any USian beers that are "krausened" (leaving yeast in the bottle).
I've never had good luck using beer on snails and slugs. Maybe it is the lack of yeast in the beer, or that most USian beer is so highly processed, that our "refined" European snails may not recognize it as beer. Micro-brewery beers, on the other hand, are too good, and too expensive to put out for the marauding gangs of gastropods that used to menace my garden.
I've seen very few slugs and snail this wet spring (19C and rain today). When I put a plant in the ground now, it is still there the next day, not just a green stump where the plant used to be. This I attribute to my reliance on ferric phosphate (iron phosphate) baits.
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