HeraldNet: Get rid of slugs



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Mudrakers

June 12, 2008

Get rid of slugs

Posted at 5:00 am by Debra Smith

Lots of rain means lots of slugs.

Forget the salt – it wrecks your soil.

I don't use old school slug bait and kill products, which are poisonous to pets and people.

Beer or other malted beverages poured in a container work. It’s not the alcohol but the fermented smell that attracts. Slugs crawl in and drown. The downside is rain dilutes the beer. Some people take sour cream containers with tops and cut a small hole in the side to let in the slugs but keep out the rain.

A roll of copper tape attached to the edges of a raised bed works. Sometimes a tightly anchored down piece of floating row cover holds slugs at bay.

Limiting the places slugs hide, such as under containers, helps. So does hand picking.

What I’ve found most effective and safe are products made with iron phosphate such as Sluggo and Escar-go. These lure the slugs in with tasty bait and then give slugs a deadly case of indigestion. It’s safe to sprinkle around everything, including vegetables. The slugs stop munching immediately and eventually “crawl away to secluded places to die,” according to my container of Sluggo. The downside: you have to keep sprinkling and the stuff isn’t cheap.

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