Best Way to Keep Slugs Out of Garden?

[MaryMary]

I recommend using coffee grounds.

 

[Pulse]

Slugs assuming you mean those catapillars? I take a naked leaf branch poke em till they fall off the plant then push it to their belly and wait till they wrap around it then stomp on them. Or you can use bug b gone. Although I used it on my veggie plants yesterday. I see no bugs today.

 

[Beth_B]

The problem with pesticides like Bug be Gone is they indiscriminately kill both harmful and beneficial insects alike (not sure about slugs), which wouldn't sit right with me. I like bugs, as long as they are not ruining my garden - and most don't. I enjoy finding interesting spiders and unusual looking bugs in my yard.

I've read - I'm sure it's been mentioned in this thread last year - that Sluggo targets slugs, leaves no harmful residue and is safe for other animals. If we have another rainy summer, I'm trying it. The beer thing didn't work for me, and finding and picking off slugs manually would be way too time consuming.

There are services that will spray your yard all season long to kill mosquitoes. Which would be lovely, except they kill just about everything else as well, and you have to keep pets inside for however many hours after each application. I'll take the annoyance of mosquitoes over having my half acre yard drenched in pesticides, thank you.

 

[Beverly]

@Pulse Caterpillars and Slugs are two entirely different animals. Caterpillars are the larvae of butterflies and moths. Slugs are shell-less terrestrial gastropod molluscs. Is this your first garden? You will want to know which "bugs" are beneficial and which "bugs" are a danger to your crops. You will find many ways to deter the bugs that threaten your garden at this website that don't require toxic chemicals and are more effective. If you read the posts in this thread you will find many ways to deter slugs, but first you need to know what a slug is. Taking a look at images for slugs on the internet would be a start.

 

[Daren]

Have wrapped aluminium foil round some plant pots of Hosters. I also top dress posts with sharp sand . the sand also helps stop dehidation of the compost as well as deterring slugs. My Copper strips have been working vary well now for the past year. Ill keep you posted on the Aluminium. Beer I have tried but find I have 10 times the slugs round my plants!. for every ten that drown I have 20 pissed ones with the munches

 

[Beverly]

@Daren oh good, i'll be interested to hear your aluminum experience. Although i have a 100% success rate with aluminum, i only started trying it a couple of years ago and occasionally as well, so we really do need more data. I hope it will not come at the expense of the Hostas

When i tried beer, it was a 100% failure for me. Each morning i went to the garden pubs, the beer was all gone and there was not a slug in sight. I looked around in the foliage looking for drunken slugs sleeping it off, but i found nothing. Clearly something was enjoying my beer. I tried different ways for about 3 days but the results were always the same, so no more partying on my beer for whatever it was.

 

[Tmheldt78]

@Daren oh good, i'll be interested to hear your aluminum experience. Although i have a 100% success rate with aluminum, i only started trying it a couple of years ago and occasionally as well, so we really do need more data. I hope it will not come at the expense of the Hostas

When i tried beer, it was a 100% failure for me. Each morning i went to the garden pubs, the beer was all gone and there was not a slug in sight. I looked around in the foliage looking for drunken slugs sleeping it off, but i found nothing. Clearly something was enjoying my beer. I tried different ways for about 3 days but the results were always the same, so no more partying on my beer for whatever it was.

I tried beer for a few weeks last year, and personally witnessed slugs crawl down the side of the container, take a long drink and crawl away with no effort. Tried a couple different containers and a couple different types of beer.
It would normally trap a couple every night, but it definitely let many more escape unharmed.

 

[DeborahJane]

Thanks Greenhorn for the idea and Beverly for the visuals. This should help my hosta attempts. Your point about locking the little b......s in is a good point. Maybe I'll sprinkle some bug pellets inside when I install the Great Copper Great Wall. I'm sure it would look like that to the slugs .

 

[headfullofbees]

The trouble with beer traps is, you'll attract Chuck to your garden.

 

[Beverly]

The trouble with beer traps is, you'll attract Chuck to your garden.

, i expect @Chuck is not the only one

 

[Verdun]

My regime includes the odd nightly torch and salt solution.....very effective in keeping numbers down. The odd pellet too but covered with discreetly placed slate or similar. I think slugs are attracted to soft....usually over fed .....growth so I try to grow plants well and sturdy and minimising fertiliser use..
I grow several hostas with little or no damage all summer.......those in pots are protected with copper tape and this is excellent.
Having a pond in the garden too......frogs and toads will control slugs. And encouraging birds dramatically reduces slug and snail numbers

 

[Pulse]

@Pulse Caterpillars and Slugs are two entirely different animals. Caterpillars are the larvae of butterflies and moths. Slugs are shell-less terrestrial gastropod molluscs. Is this your first garden? You will want to know which "bugs" are beneficial and which "bugs" are a danger to your crops. You will find many ways to deter the bugs that threaten your garden at this website that don't require toxic chemicals and are more effective. If you read the posts in this thread you will find many ways to deter slugs, but first you need to know what a slug is. Taking a look at images for slugs on the internet would be a start.

Thanks I looked up the bugs that eat on my tomato plants and found out lol I was mixing worms with caterpillars. So the bugs I was killing were horned worms and some other grayish purple worms. But I do have this tree that drops silk moth are these ok to keep around?

 

[Beverly]

@Pulse the grayish purple worms could possibly be Army worms and they can cause all kinds of damage. Do an image search for Army worms to see if that fits the worm you had, and if it does you will know to watch out for them and dispatch (personally, i pop them in the freezer).

I have no experience with silk moth caterpillars. Do you mean these caterpillars are falling out of one or more of your trees? Are they falling out dead or alive?. Have they eaten all of the leaves from one of your trees? They have multiple food sources. The caterpillars are adorable. If they are falling out alive then either the food source is exhausted, or they are being heavily predated, or they are ready to pupate and become Silk Moths. I read that Silk Moths do not eat and live only 2 days as an adult and have to procreate during that time. If they are falling out dead, then most likely the leaves that they are eating have been sprayed with some pesticide or insectIcide.

I cannot say much more than that without further information and you will want to talk with people who have had experience with this caterpillar.

Originally, you were confusing Caterpillars with Slugs (with are related to Snails). So, you are doing well. Now, it seems you are understanding the difference between Caterpillars and worms: Caterpillars are larvae of butterflies and moths and as adults they become butterflies or moths. A worm on the other hand does not make that transition. Once a worm, always a worm, and not all worms are bad. Earthworms for example are beneficial to the soil. Clearly you are on the the path to enlightenment. And your question about silk moth caterpillars is a very good one. I did a GF search for prior threads regarding silk moth caterpillars and nothing came up.

So, you need to start a new thread in this same forum and title it "Silk Moth Caterpillars, has anyone had experience".

Right now you are on a thread that is all about getting rid of slugs. So open up the Pest and Diseases forum and begin a new thread regarding Silk Moth Caterpillars. If you have any problems starting a new thread, let me know.

 

[MaryMary]

I know I posted this in a different thread about slugs, and since they are back, I'll post it to this one, as well. Slugs love dry cat food. They crawl past all the flowers in the flowerbed to get on the porch for cat food. They will gorge themselves on cat food. I'm not suggesting you feed them as a trade-off, but if you are looking to bait a home-made trap of any sort - dry cat food.


The local paper had an article with a suggestion for sampling a field for the presence of slugs. (There are a lot of corn and soybean fields around me.) If you lay out a board, shingle, or damp newspaper, they will collect under there to hide for the day. (I'm thinking of setting some traps to lure them to their demise.)

The newspaper article also gave the online OSU extension fact-sheet about slugs on field crops. I found some of the info useful, so I'll share. For those who want to read it, here is the website. http://ohioline.osu.edu/factsheet/ENT-20


If you don't want to read the full article, here are the bits I found helpful.
You may have to adjust the time of year to reflect where you live, YMMV.

From the section on scouting:

The following guidelines are to help scout for slug eggs, juvenile slugs, or adults in spring and early summer. Warmer days of April and early May are the time to determine if slugs are present. Sift through previous crop residue and look at the soil surface for slugs. Mostly eggs or adults will probably be found at this time. Care must be taken to search for the small eggs often in clusters that will either be clear and half the size of BBs

Egg and adult sampling should occur until late May/early June when newly hatched juveniles (fig. 10) are found. Juvenile slugs are quite small and care should be taken so they are not overlooked.

From the section on management:

Slug management with a pesticide is difficult because (1) of the slug's biology and (2) the lack of materials that are effective. Because of the slug's ability to "slime," most toxins that are contact poisons are sloughed off. The only materials that are somewhat effective are those highly caustic to the slug, for example, salt solutions or concentrated liquid fertilizers. However, at concentrations usually effective, these materials can be highly phytotoxic to the plant. Most insecticides are not toxic to slugs when ingested. The only two "insecticides" used against slugs in the past 2–3 decades were methiocarb (Mesurol®) and thiodicarb (Larvin®), neither of which are legal for use anymore as molluscicides in the United States (they are permitted for slug control in Europe). The only true molluscicide in the United States is metaldehyde, a material produced by Lonza in Switzerland and formulated in various products in the United States. An additional material with slug activity contains iron phosphate, and goes by the name Sluggo.

Although Sluggo, the iron-phosphate bait, is becoming more common, its lower effectiveness and higher cost makes it a less desirable bait for field crops.

Edited because I realized the caution in one quote was the bit that needed clicked to be read... I bolded the "However" in the hopes you'd read the caution.
WHOOP!! WHOOP!! There's a caution!!

 

[Beverly]

Wow @MaryMary what a load of good information and thank you for taking the time. I am not experiencing slugs this year because we have not had a drop of rain since February and it should be pouring rain by now. But i know one of these days, they will be back.

The caution is duly noted. Actually i like the damp newspaper idea to get lots of slugs to congregate in one place during the day, and it is great to know that slugs like dry cat food so much. I think i can do a lot of slug damage with just those two items. This is great info