Slugs

[Dick Adams]

I live in Ellicott City, MD and have been in this house for 19 years. Yesterday there were three LARGE slugs on our patio. First time we've seen slugs. From whence did they come?

[phorbin]

Have you asked them?

[Steve Peek]

They've probably been there all the time. They're very good at hiding during the daylight hours. Get some Sluggo and sprinkle around plants you want to protect. It's only poisonous to slugs and snails.

[Billy]

If you punch "

" into Google, one of the responses will be "[PDF] SNAILS AND SLUGS" Click that and you should get: LESS-TOXIC PEST MANAGEMENT CONTROLLING SNAILS AND SLUGS IN YOUR GARDEN

A sub-heading will bring you to "USE IRON PHOSPHATE BAIT"

The products recommended are "Sluggo", "Escar-Go", or "Worry Free", whose active ingredient is ferric phosphate (iron phosphate on the lable). Home Despot also has a house brand that uses "iron phosphate". It's a little pricy, but effective and worry free.

[Bill who putters]

Easy way to bring critters into your garden is by purchasing container plants. Who knows where they have been?

Concerning slugs. Billy from Camp run a mock told me about

service is V E R Y Slow.

500g for $100 but you only need 1 % to kill em.

[rhubarb]

We live in Oregon and have plenty of slugs and snails here. We've had good success lately by hand-picking them in the middle of the night for a few nights in a row, and also by putting out beer traps (beer mixed with a little bit of yeast in small jars (e.g. baby food jars) strategically placed around the garden, especially close to areas where slugs are likely to come from.

We also got ducks, and there's nothing more satisfying than feeding the hand-picked bounty to our ducks. :)

[Billy]

Ducks is good, if they don't eat your seedlings.

[Steve Peek]

Actually the garter snake is quite fond of slugs.