Hey Jennifer: I did use Sluggo once but you have to re apply it often. Seemed like a pain for the cost. We have three cats that are into positively anything so I have to use any chemicals if I can help it. So last year I went out and bought a whole bunch of plastic ashtrays from the dollar store. This is for my hosta beds. Once a week I fill up the ashtrays that are hidden behind the hostas with whatever the single cheapest beer is at the grocery. At that time I might rinse out the slug carcasses or I might not. It is just as effective to pour beer in with or without dead slugs (or what's left of them) in the ashtray. I do rinse them out as needed with the hose and then put them back in place. It works great. Furthermore I like the looks on my neighbors faces when I walk around the front yard at 6 a.m. Saturday morning carrying a six pack:) Kate

I don't think that the slugs were after your Japanese maple tree. I think they were just escaping the rain. Every time it rains here, the slugs will climb up the sides of my house trying to reach higher ground. After the rain ends, I go around the house using my hand shovel to kill any that I find. This helps keep their numbers in check. Fortunately, they don't ever climb up my plant shelves and tables.

Yes, djacob, I see them on my plants and all around those plants. I don’t have a chance of tending to all the billions of leaves that fall on my property and in the garden. Even if I did clear the garden, winter winds would blow new ones on and they’d settle down in the plant stems for winter. I have sooooo much slug habitat. I was surprised they could kill a baptisia, but I put my beer trap out too late and they exhausted the root, plus that particular baptisia was in bad soil and wasn’t the strongest anyway, and also young. I think you gave me my answer! I do have thicker leaved and puckered hostas, so that must be it. With the other plants, they will devour emerging shoots, but they don’t climb up and eat them much at all once mature. They like the tender shoots, and my hostas really aren’t all that tender. Thank you!

If it truly is a slugless season, rejoice in it!! There is no such thing here in the PNW. Even after weeks of no rain, slugs and their shelled cousins (snails) are omnipresent. I was out walking the dog the other morning and saw several inching their way across the lawn and slime trails are always evident on my patio in the morning. I should own stock in Sluggo!!