Oh my goodness! California has not yet set their best do gooders on the kill Sluggo and Escargo mission. The Swiss are ahead of them. I have used Escargo for years. My worm count at it's best three years ago was twelve to twenty in the turn of a single garden spade from an organic content of seventeen percent. That also was at the height of the largest one time observation of egg laying I have yet to witness. Escargo has been in use here on the same ground for as long as it has been available without any noticeable harm to anything but the slugs. The robins and moles eat more worms than Sluggo or Escargo harm. On that great garden soil I have grown nine hundred pound Atlantic Giant pumpkins, ninety eight inch Long Gourds and up to five pound tomatoes. The Long Gourd was the largest such gourd grown in Pennsylvania a few years ago. The genetics in that seed produced more over a hundred inch gourds in the history of the sport. All of these items grew with the protection of Escargo in close and continuous use to protect them from an army of slugs.

Shane, I collect ~ 8 five-gallon buckets of UCG/tea and filters weekly from my local Shoney's restaurant here in South Boston, Virginia, hardly a dot on anyone's map. They could not be nicer to me and bend over backwards to help me, to the point of loading the heavy buckets into my car trunk. I'm 67. They don't know my age, but know I could use the help. Before that, I was collecting from Sheetz, a "family" owned business selling gas, sandwiches, donuts, and such. A new manager (young, clueless, and enamored by "power") came in, looked at the (cleaned) buckets awaiting coffee grounds and mandated "That's unprofessional. Stop doing that." Score: Shoney's Restaurnant ........... 100% cooperative Sheetz .................................. 100% ignorant

Hi Cora! Yes, a 10% ammonia solution in a spray bottle is by far the easiest to kill slugs on sight without damaging your plants or soil. (You should not use a salt shaker.) Just take any old spray bottle and put in 9 parts water, 1 part household ammonia (non-sudsing kind, if you have it). You may read about stronger solutions (more ammonia), but it is not necessary. Since you will be spraying the slugs as you see them, you will also see that a 10% solution works. Have fun! Carol

Coll, you say" So I either spray and melt them on the spot or cut them in half with a tool if I have one handy. I read that if they have even one eye left, they will live. You can squash them with your foot, but cutting them in half is just making two of them, or so I assume. This is really a gross subject, reminds me of a slobbering bulldog with strings of slime getting on my hands, and I really don't like that....although bulldogs are fine, nothing against them, just their drool!!! You all have some exotic slimeballs to deal with, mine are all one kind, that wet gray color. My turtle disappeared, have not seen any frogs or toads this year, so it is up to me and the ammonia and Sluggo Plus and any other chemical in my arsenal. I had to stop with the pellets while it was raining so much, but now I must resume the back breaking job of spreading Sluggo on the ground, and ammonia in the pots. It's amazing to me that tender plant roots do not die from the ammonia, because it destroys my skin if I come in contact with it--or bleach for that matter. After I treated some plantaginea with a bleach solution for foliar nematodes, I had dermatitis for two weeks....it got on my hands and kneecaps, don't know how that happened.