What a great resource...thanks
Kathy

Glad to see this Patrick. I thought I was a real smarty pants this year and planted marigolds in a hot sunny area that had never seen slugs, now I have little sticks. And I knew better ! Ive been really viligant this year searching them out and drowning them in my shade garden, little sneaks must have wandered all the way across the yard for their new little snack.

I kill all but the banana slugs, which are native and reported to only eat dead and decaying matter. They mostly stick to the woods and stay out of the garden.

Did you know that a banana slug can live up to 4 years?

I enjoy taking late evening (10:30 PM) strolls through my garden with a flashlight and a pair of scissors, you get the drift. After less than a week I see very few slugs. It's a nice way to wind down before bed. I have never seen a banana slug but I will remove it from my garden instead of bisecting it. Dana

I deported a few banana slugs to the woods. I like to be out at twilight and have resorted to cutting them up, it would be easier with a pot of boiling water to dump the tiny ones in, but yuck.

Chopsticks! I'd die of old age if I relied on chopsticks to pick even some of the myriad of slugs out here. However, I'd probably improve my chopstick skills immensely.

I keep a large nail ~4 inches long stuck by the edge of the gardens and skewer as I find the little slimers. Or use pruning shears, smash with rock, shovel etc.

I cut a slug in half the other day with some scissors, it was eating my new hosta...I nearly lost my lunch. You guys must have much stronger stomachs than I.

Heather

My slugs are mostly small, so "slice-n-dice" isn't always a option...I usually transfer them onto a hard surface and smash them. When I lived in Woodinville, I had larger ones and favored the amonia solution in a spritz bottle..that really got them. Table salt also was good...dessicated them pretty fast.

Heather, I'm kinda like you...I really don't like cutting or squishing them, especially if they're more than just tiny. In summer weather, I sometimes toss them out in the middle of the street to fry.

Patrick

After a rain I walk around with my foot edger and hack them in half. That way I don't need to bend over.

Elaine

I used to collect slugs on the foliage they were eating, place them in a plastic bag, tie it up and put it in the trash - goodbye slugs! However, a couple of years ago Mike U was over and fed a few to my Koi - they loved them! I was initially pretty squeamish about doing this, then figured that it was all just part of the food chain. My Koi are really friendly in any event, and always follow me around the pond as I move around the yard. Today they spent the whole day hovering next to the edge of the pond closest to where I was working, anxiously awaiting all those tasty morsels I found as I weeded my poorly neglected back beds.

So dig a pond, your fish will thank you for it!

Cathy

I collect the slugs in a small empty nursery pot and toss them to my chickens. They love them! My daughter (almost 3) will even help me find them so I can pick them up. She loves to help.

When I lived in town (without chickens!) I used the throw them in the road and let them fry technique. I don't have the stomach to cut them up. Though, as a small child, my mother would give me a sharp stick and let me go at it, so I must not have always been such a whimp.

Great resource Patrick. Thanks so much for posting it.

Mary

Great post and timely too!

Did anyone notice we slug-infested (gastropod-gifted?) PNWers responding to this post eschewed the whole crushed eggshell/coffee grounds/gravel barrier thing? That's coz we know darn well it just doesn't work! I once saw a picture of a slug crawling across a single-edged RAZOR BLADE and have never forgotten it.

Poisons, innocuous and otherwise, beer and the like only seem to attract the pests. A few do die, but I recognize a drunk slug when I see one sliming down the sidewalk at a distinct list.

Ammonia and other sprays are likely quite effective. With an acre to oversee, however, I figure I'd come down with carpal tunnel syndrome of the trigger finger before I saw any decimation of the dastardly devils.

The tried and true methods of pick-up, fling, drown, spear and slice, or any combination thereof, seem the most popular. I repeat the previous admonition to never, ever slice a super-sized slug in half, as its icky insides virtually explode out of the wound in a wash of greenish viscosity. Yuck, yuck, yuck.

Myself, I'm inclined to look into all-natural, labor-saving devices, namely animals. The koi idea is intriguing, but I would still have to run about and hunt down the hated hermaphrodites. No, give me something ambulatory, like a duck or a chicken, a turtle or a toad. Probably wouldn't want snakes and we don't have lightening bug larvae out here in Woodinville, darn it all.

You know what my all-time favorite would be? A hedgehog! The folks in England are always bragging about how many slugs their little "heggies" consume. What do you think? Maybe keep them in a rabbit hutch and lead them on supervised sorties?

Fighting the good fight against the forces of slime,

Rain

LOL...Rain, that's too funny!

I'd consider ducks...but every time I spotted duck doo, I'd do a doubletake...is it a dastardly slug or a slick stick of ducky doo?!

Amongst chickens, I'd consider a bantam hen...they do far less damage with their scratch-n-peck feeding than a larger chicken. But then there's the worry over varmits killing Henny Penny.

What to do?! I think I'll put out some boards with slug bait hidden below...and maybe mix up some ammonia solution for an evening foray.

I just picked a peony that the rain took to the ground. After I shook the water out, I went to sniff it and found no less than 3 tiny slugs feasting inside the petals. Nice place to stick one's nose! yukkers

Patrick

Sluggo works - also the old beer trick - I found it's best to use a solid color butter tub rather than the one I just used today, one peek inside and you throw the whole thing away - today I used a semi clear covered tub, cut down a couple of openings and put yeast & sugar and water in it - had no beer, and they are definitely not going to drink my Chablis. Deadline works, but it's hazardous to other critters - Salt works but I can't look at them as they are bio-degrading. I've been doing Sluggo & beer for the last couple of years and am pretty pleased with results from both methods. Not 100% though.

My DH made me a slug gun -- a stick about 30 inches long with an old knife blade screwed to the bottom. A slug hunt with this weapon at dusk, flashlight in hand is great. I think someone should market it.

Hmm,

Dotty's slug gun sounds intriguing. I'll keep checking back to see what new ideas people come up with to rid their environs of the puscular pests (no, "puscular" isn't a word you'd find in any dictionary, but I think it evokes the nature of the beast).

Here's to a slime-free summer,

Rain

Last year we were ready to give up gardening and open a slug ranch instead.

Q: How many slugs does it take to eat $60.00 worth of marigolds to the ground (along with all our strawberries, trollius, etc.)?

A: I don't know, but that many were in our yard over a two week period last summer. They only came out at night, and completely ignored the slug carnage we would create whenever we found one during the day. Slug poison? Yum! Beer? Hah! We would find drunken colonies living under the traps. Our cats run from them- our kids aren't interested in them as collectibles- what do you do?

thanks for whomever mentioned beer for the slugs...I put out a clear plastic container filled with a Fat Tire Ale at dusk on Saturday night. Sunday morning I had at least 15 dead slugs in the beer filled container. I did not knows some slugs were so small and skinny. I must have had every size of slug in that beer, all dead....This container was put into one of my nine 8'x8' beds with the cabbage and cauliflower...wonder if I should now put the beer in each of the nine raised veggie beds....anyway, thanks for the neat trick to kill these slimy cabbage eaters....

I have this mental image (cartoon style) of a bunch of slugs in sunglasses & Hawaiian print shirts doing a congo line around Keith's beer "pools"....just before they dive in. lol

Patrick

Use 25% amonia solution in a small pump sprayer (1 qt). No more carple finger syndrome with the spray bottle and they don't leak like spray bottles.
My wife and I generally go through 2 bottles a night spraying the suckers.

I don't think the ammonia works on the brown ones with the tough thick skin. They just seem to exude their slime and slither away.

OH *@!% ... today I found one my young brugmansias with riddled leaves & 4 slugs sitting smugly on the surface of the soil. I smashed them on a flat rock with the sole of my shoe...the war is on! The brug isn't irreversibly damaged, but sure looks bad. I've been watching it every day for slug damage, but boy when they finally discovered it, they sure went after it.

Hmmm...shopping list:

amonia
salt
cheap beer
copper
coarse sand
Sluggo
Dead Line
scissors
chop sticks
BIG nail
ducks
banty hen with chicks
koi
yeah...that's a good start!

Patrick

I use the 'ol beer in the margarine container' trick. Have to do it when DH isn't looking tho, 'cause he gets choked that I use perfectly good beer(his beer, I don't drink the stuff)to do the deed. tee hee!
I have read that the best time to get rid of the nasty little creatures is in the fall as this is when they are pregnant.
Lynt

I have been using Worry Free Slug and Snail Bait for a couple of years and have good luck with it. I seldom see slugs and have lost none of my Hostas from them. It is safe to use around areas where pets are present and is harmless to wildlife. I am surprised that none of you have mentioned it. It sure beats the sight of squashed or disected creatures!!
Irma

We use Sluggo. We used to have a huge problem with slugs. Now, I hardly ever see them. We don't even put Sluggo out all the time. (Don't want to actually ATTRACT the pesky varmits!). Whenever we see a slug, we just surround it with Sluggo (that way, no matter which way it goes, it's tempted with a tasty bite of Sluggo). We don't even deliberately go slug hunting. If we happen to come across one, the 'ol surround with Sluggo technique, and poof, no more problem. It has worked wonders!

Like Worry Free Slug, Sluggo is harmless to other wildlife. It is iron oxide or something like that - only toxic to slugs.

I used to go hunting with ammonia/water in spray bottle, but learned that slugs are territorial--when they notice a vaccancy in your garden, the ones next door move right in and you have to start over.

So now I grow most everything in hanging baskets--slugs have not figured those out yet! Except for nasturiums, which are peppery enough that most slugs leave 'em alone. You might try surrounding what you like with nasturiums, but what if the slugs get inside the 'nasty' fence?

Hanging baskets works 100%, no effort.

I unintentionally got some with my flamer yesterday and it sure did quick work. Maybe I'll start watching for them while I'm flaming weeds. :)

Hmmm, time to name your slugs? Snap, Crackle & Pop perhaps?!

Naw, there is no snap, crackle or pop, they're gone too fast, which is good for them. Hmmm...I wonder if there's a market for crispy slugs, buttered and salted like popcorn. Wanna be the first buyer Patrick? :)

Can we say EWWW ?!!

Too bad we aren't dealing with snails...we could make a special flamer thrower for the purpose and name it EscarGONE!

February is the time to start killing them. Don't wait until they've proliferated.

Jim

I find it funny... I guess I can classify myself as a real gardener...lol. Before I really worked on developing my gardens I never saw any slugs. Now I have to fight them off all year long it seems. I have them in great abundance last year and this year.
Slug hunting has now begun!

Kathy

I found my first patch of slug eggs this week. Will the ammonia spray work to destroy eggs?

I plant potatoes in garbage cans like Ciscoe describes. Last year, I found dozens of little tiny slugs (like no bigger than a pencil eraser) munching away on my potatoes. After a week all but three of the plants were *gone*. Like completely GONE.

I only got enough of my beloved Bison last year to overwinter seed for this year.

I just bought some Sluggo, and I am ready for the onslaught this year. I even left room in the cans to put in some beer traps.

The war is on!

Did you see where it said banana slugs grow to 8" long with some up to 18" long?

*twitch*

If I ever find one that big I'm taking a picture to show everyone! And then I'm going to run screaming!

Actually, I only rarely see the banana slugs eating my plants. They're more often found on my compost pile, eating the dead material. So I leave them alone, aside from tossing them out into the forest where they belong. Now the red and browns slugs ... kill on sight!!

I'll confess: I'm a transplanted St. Louisan who'd only seen one slug in her yea, many years, before moving to Washington and the habitat of these GROSS creatures. I can't spear them; I can't cut them; I can't sprinkle salt on them. (I'm the straight A student who took an F for the quarter in highschool biology because I refused to cut up that poor little frog.) I can shake the Sluggo container! :)
Late last summer, though, I saw something that I think is worth trying this year. (As a matter of fact, I've bought the copper tubing.) It's a ring of copper to be placed around your most treasured plants. The lady who was doing this said that she just goes out in the spring and rubs a piece of sandpaper over the rings to remove the oxidized material and that the actually WORK! When I get the tubing cut, hubby is going to solder them for me :)

Any chance the up coming cold will take a few of the slimy #&$#& out? How cold does it need to be, and for how long?
I think I would rather have the slugs than lose some of my prize plants......

Eeeek! An 18 inch banana slug? Gross! Wouldn't want to meet that one in my bare feet when I run out to the car to get something at night. Have you ever done that and squished a slug? Gross, isn't it?

A friend of mine carries a plastic fork with her in the garden during the evening. She calls it her 'slug slinging fork'. She spears the slug and then flings it over her fence into her vacant lot. It's amusing to watch.

I almost have more of a snail problem in my garden. I grew up in this area and there were no snails but now there are tons of them. My stepmother gardens on the other end of town and has none of them.

What a great website!

I'm with DanaVG and some others...I go around with scissors in the evening and cut them in two. I aim for decapitation.

Scientists are working on slug poison made from caffeine, I read.

Greetings Washington. Southeast Alaska here, and I get 'em too. After hunting slugs for years, gagging from the kill, burning out my grandsons even with a "bounty", last year I broke down and lined all my flower beds, boxes and containers with copper. Bought it from an art supply house, cut it in 3" strips and nailed er down. Even added a strip around the bottom of my new little greenhouse. GLAD TO SAY I had (nearly) no problems - only killt 2 or 3 that somehow got into my tomatoes. I think they traversed along the house, and somehow made it onto the attached greenhouse and got in - a "gang" perhaps? So I'm getting busy now checking all the copper zap before anything comes up too far and hoping to have as good a year this year. That copper really does work! Ketchikan A.

You guys have me laughing so hard!!!! Does this battle with slugs ever end? If I'm in the garden and I have pruning shears with me, they get cut in half. If I don't have them, any stick to spear them with will do. Yuk, yuk, yuk, but I hate these creatures.

Beer traps worked wonders for us. Tall yogurt tubs, two notches out of the top (like the top of a castle wall) and the lid back on, to stop rain diluting the beer. Bury to the bottom of the notch. Slugs check in...

We once counted (just for fun?!?!) 65 alcohol-poisoned slugs in one tub. Dead slugs add protein to compost.

I just toss them into my neighbor's yard!! Joe

I had a seedling tray in the garden the other day, and was picking the tomatoes that the 'vermin' had gotten to. I threw them all into the seedling tray to transport them to the compost. Carrying all of my tools and produce out of the garden, I inadvertently forgot the seedling tray full of mushy half eaten tomatoes. That night, it rained and filled up the tray sitting in the middle of the garden. When I returned to it the next day, I had a nasty tomato soup with HUNDREDS of dead slugs. I dumped that in the trash and returned the tray with ONE tomato :) and filled it back up with water. It is now my really repulsively disgusting extremely effective slug trap.

I have such a terrible slug problem that along with sluggo I've resigned myself to donning vinyl nursing gloves and going slug-picking several times per day and night. Sluggo gets the little ones and my gloves fingers pluck the bigger ones. Hundreds per day. I line a juice pitcher with 2 plastic bags and double-bag the slugs, put into an empty used bird food bag and deposit in trash. Only drawback is the stench of mass amounts of dead slugs decomposing in the trash. They really do stink. Cool weather eventually will help with that. Beer works as a trap attractant but I'd go broke buying enough beer.

Have oodles of cottage stone retaining walls which slugs love as condominiums. They come slithering out the cracks at all hours. Last winter even when it was below freezing they came out to munch. Wish I had neighbors with flocks of geese that would appreciate the "treat."

You heard about the lady who got arrested for tossing slugs on to the road? The slime was causing cars to slide into the ditch :)

You guys, stop wasting the beer on slugs! Mix up a tablespoon of yeast and some sugar in warm water and set it out in some yogurt containers sunk in the ground. They'll find it at night and all you have to do is fish out their drowned remains and dump in the compost. And if you see the big black beetles in your garden, don't distrub them. They love slug eggs.