You don't have any beer? Well that is your first problem! ;-) I put out some beer traps last year and caught a bunch of slugs. I have tried twice this spring but none of them have taken the bait....they might not like Bud Light, but there is no way I am giving them my Sierra Nevada Pale Ale!!

I have read of dozens of strategies for controling slugs...though I cannot say that I recall reading anything about vermiculite or perlite. There are some reasonably safe treatments sold. Sluggo I think is one of them.

- Brent

My first choice is beer. It is cheap, easy and highly effective. However, I acknowledge your objections to this method. Try diotomaceous earth. It is, in my opinion expensive, can be hard to find, and must be reapplied everytime it rains, or more often. However, because it is ground up something or other with sharp edges (seashells maybe?) it will scratch the surface of the slugs and dehydrate them to death.

Brent, I find the beers with a stronger aroma to be more effective. Light beers are often not very aromatic.

I read in a post that you can sprinkle fine sand around your seedlings. Slugs don't like to cross it because it is sharp. I have never tried it but am going to when I plant out slug favorites.

Bonny

Eggshells work for me, although others don't necessarily have good luck with them.

Most effective is picking it out late evening. Water your garden at evening and in a few hours all of them will be on surface crawling around your plants.
If that is too much excitement for you, try Sluggo. Expensive but works.

Something is eating mine, too. Several echinacea disappeared from their milk jugs overnight. Something has eaten several clumps of ruby flax, and it's too much for a slug or 2 to devour overnight. Not sure what all I'm fighting here. I have been treating with Sluggo since early spring, also hand picking in early morning. I got a big slimy one from a zinnia today before any apparent damage.

Echinacea in jugs: Overnight I know one seedling totally disappeared, and an Eastern Tent Caterpillar was in the jug. Do they eat flowers? I thought they only ate tree foliage. Serveal echinacea have done that- just disappeared totally overnight. And those !@#$%^& caterpillars are everywhere now, millions of them.

But then this morning a huge flower stem was gone from verbascum Southern Charm. It had been about a 12 in stem late yesterday and this morning the top half of it was gone. No damage to basal foliage. Any ideas? Do rabbits eat these?

Karen

sob... slugs... the word makes me crumple into tears. They're eating my hollyhocks, and my sunflowers, and my lupins... sob. I'm using LOTS of sluggo. I'm using eggshells. I squish every one I see. I go slug hunting with my boys, all of us armed with pointy sticks. Those hollyhocks were meant to fill in a big gap in my hedge where a tree came down last winter, and now I've got lots of little slime-covered stems :(

Skye
going to go weep on the couch

I use diatomaceous earth and yes it does need to reapplied often but I won't use poison and don't want beer or any other saucer full of liquid and dead slugs. I've heard of using copper wire, supposedly the slugs won't cross over it but I've yet to try that.
Karyn

Lay copper around your beds...they will get zapped...it does work. There are even sprays that contain copper. The beer works very well in a saucer that is at ground level.

Here is a link that might be useful: Slug control

Does anyone know about the Eastern Tent Caterpillars? There was one in the echinacea container the morning that one seedling disappeared?

Or what might like verbascum? At least the top half (full of flower buds), probably 6 inches, of a flower stem was missing. Do rabbits like them? A slug or caterpillar doesn't seem likely to have done that.

Karen

A Woodchuck devoured my seedlings that were lining my deck last year, some were transplanted into small pots, some were in their original containers.

Eggshells supposedly work for slugs, but I found squirrels love them too, so they ended up digging around the seedlings, mostly destroying them.

I've used Gardens Alive! Escar Go which worked wonders on my slug population. This too needs to be reapplied, but I only do 2 or 3 applications from spring to fall. It's pricey, but effective.

I had zero luck with beer traps; Bud possibly isn't their beer of choice?

I'm using sluggo and eggshells but need to re-evaluate this since its not working. Someone is devouring my dahlia's and more but especially the dahlia's.

I dislike my neighbors on the right and will sometimes fling the slugs over to the yard like Trudi said once with a spoon. It gives me great joy to do that. :-)

I've tried ever organic method out there, but where slug and snail infestations are a really terrible problem, it is only possible to mitigate the damage, not to completely eliminate it. However, there are a few tricks that can help.

Apply an organic bait such as Sluggo heavily a couple of days before planting out to give it time to work. The evening before plant-out day, arm yourself with a spray bottle containing one part household ammonia and 4 parts water. Walk around your garden with a glass of wine and enjoy shooting the little buggers into a foamy death. (The ammonia solution will turn to nitrogen and act as a fertilizer. Do be careful with it around very tender new foliage to avoid nitrogen burn.)

When you do plant out, don't plant all of that particular batch at once. For example, I planted three Monarda fistulosa hunks the other day and kept three in reserve. One got eaten, and so I will replace it with reserve plants. The same thing happened with Yvonne's salvia.

If it's a special perennial that is new to me, I will plant just one out as a test plant. If it gets eaten right away, I will know to hold the rest over until they get quite a bit of size to them.

To Skye:

Have you heard of Nemaslug? It is a biological control you can buy in the United Kingdom containing a native nematode that is predatory to slugs and several types of snails. It is supposedly highly effective.

Unfortunately, it cannot yet be imported to the United States because the nematodes are non-native. A variety of studies need to be conducted first to demonstrate that it doesn't harm non-target organisms.

Here is a link that might be useful: Nemaslug

Oh no...that's beer abuse LOL!

I've lost losts of salvia seedlings in the past too....coulda been slugs, but I think in my case it was the earwigs!! So......I feel ya! The only salvia they've never attacked were the S. officinalis.
If you don't have beer you can also create traps with water, sugar and yeast; place in a bowl and bury to the rim in the garden :D

I haven't done it in several years, (mostly cause we were in drought and had little problems with slugs!), but I have used the ammonia/water method successfully. I would go out at night around 10:00, take a flashlight and my spray bottle, and have a great deal of fun zapping the slugs.

I have used Sluggo pellets occasionally. It does seem to help around plants that are very prone to being munched.

We've had so much rain this year, I might have to start hunting again.

Lisa

Here is a cheap and easy way to eliminate slugs. Mix equal parts clear ammonia and water in gallon jug. Add 2-3 tablespoons of Murphy's oil Soap, mix and pout into spray bottle.

Go out after dark with a good flashlight and spray mixture right on the little buggers. They instantly turn to slime and die and fall off plants. There is a lot of satisfaction with this method. I have reduced the slug population to almost nothing using this spray. The ammonia will not hurt plants, mixed with water, it is almost pure nitrogen and really makes the hostas green up. Do this for 3-4 nights in a row and then couple times a week after. In the fall, be sure to check the grass. We found that's when they are out "making whoopie" for new babies in the spring. We had them so bad a couple years ago, DH mixed this in a 3 gallon sprayer and would use it all in one night. My Grandson loves to say on a warm evening, "Hey Nana, lets go hunt slugs.

The Murphy's oil soap will remain on the leaves and when those baby slugs you see eat the leaves, it will give them a fatal case of the trots. Just what they deserve!

I have used beer traps, but found this to eliminate them much faster and I don't have to dump the dead slugs out.

Susanc, yes, I tried Nemaslug last summer, did everything just as directed and even had the right weather for it, but I can't say it's helped noticeably. Slugs around here (and their slimy friends the snails) are practically a plague, it is incredibly frustrating. My little boys' marigolds have been the latest victims to the roaming slime gangs. My rudbeckia is missing. :(

Hi Skye,

That's disappointing to hear that Nemaslug is not a magic bullet. -I had been eagerly awaiting its availability here.

I can empathize with you. Slugs and snails are rampant here too, and I have lost many things to them. I try hard to be Zen about it, since there are many plants that they won't bother, but it is difficult when you really are looking forward to having a particular plant.

April: That's a good tip on the Murphy's oil soap. The next time I mix up a batch of ammonia water, I'll try adding that.

April mentions an ammonia recipe. I use 1 part ammonia mixed with 9 parts water and soak my gardens every spring. As April states, ammonia is a nitrogen source and will not harm established plants - notice the word 'established'. I will plant seedling in a garden which has been soaked with this concoction, but only after a couple of days. I haven't risked it on seedlings. Maybe someone else has and they can offer an insight.

Any fermenting product will attract - ATTRACT - slugs. Try leaving a can of pineapples out for a couple of days until they ferment, then place in shallow containers in your garden, maybe mixing a bit of soap.

I work in a pizza joint and have been using old uncooked dough this year which smells like beer. They love the stuff. I put it out at night, and in the morning retrieve the dishes which are full of soon to be food for the birds. My flock of Robins is so fat!