Basic Garden Tips

How to Rid Your Garden of Snails and Slugs

Slugs and snails are one of the greatest enemies of the home gardener. They can devastate a garden practically overnight.

Slugs do provide some benefit by helping get rid of decaying material. However, in the garden they are nothing but pests. Slugs will eat practically anything you plant. I have even had them eat onions, garlic and jalapeno peppers in my garden. They are especially fond of lettuce, tomatoes, beans, asparagus and cabbage.

The only way to completely eliminate snails and/or slugs forever...is to live where they do not exist. Maybe the Sahara Desert...or on top of a mountain? The point is that slugs exist anywhere conditions allow plants to grow. So, accept the fact that if you grow a garden, you will probably have slugs to some degree. The goal is to be able to keep more of your plants than the slugs take.

Slugs are night feeders, therefore you may never see one in your garden during the day. If you have planted young, small plants and found they are cut off at the stem or completely gone the next day, you probably have slugs in your garden. On larger plants with leaves close to the ground you may find large holes in the leaves.

To determine if you have slugs, look for their clear, silvery, mucous trail. Also, go out into the garden just before daylight with a flashlight and look. You will probably see them, especially if the ground is moist.

So, let's begin our war on slugs.

First, remove all of the slugs hiding places from your garden and nearby. Rocks, wooden boards, grass or weed clippings are all home to slugs. Get rid of them. Your garden should look like bare ground (surrounding your plants). Also, tie up plants so that there are no leaves or vegetables touching the ground. Even cucumbers can be trained to climb a trellis so the cukes do not touch the ground.

One method, although labor intensive, is to go out in the garden every morning right before dawn and hand pick the slugs. Do this until you can not find any more.

In conjunction with this you can use the old method of placing small containers of stale beer in the garden. Just take a small container, fill with beer and bury up to the rim throughout the garden. The snails are attracted to the beer, fall in and drown.

Another method is to place a copper strip completely around the garden. It is said that slugs will not cross the copper. You can buy copper strips made for this purpose at most garden shops. I have never tried this and have my doubts about it's effectiveness.

You can also buy snail/slug baits at your garden shop. However, if you go this route, be aware that these baits are poison to animals (dogs are attracted to it) and small children. There are new baits available now that are "Pet Safe". It cost a little more but, if you use slug baits, I urge you to use only the "pet safe" baits.

Personally, I would not put any substance that will kill dogs on vegetables I intend to eat.

Finally, a method I've never tried, but should be mentioned. You can buy Decollate Snails, a predator of slugs, and place them in your garden. You can find them on the internet (search for Decollate Snails). The drawback is that they are not legal in every location, especially Northern California. Also, it takes about 2 years for them to be effective. But, you may want to try them.

So, how do you get rid of slugs? There is no magic formula. If you apply every method described here you will probably still see an occasional slug. But, by using a combination of these methods you can control them with this program:
1. Start working on eliminating snails and slugs in the spring (even before you have plants in the garden)
2. Place several buried containers of stale beer around the garden. It's easy and little maintenance.
3. Apply "Pet Friendly" snail bait around perimeter of garden.
4. Go in the garden at least 2 days a week, in early morning, and hand pick any visible slugs.
5. Be persistent

You will find, with this routine, that it becomes more and more difficult to find any slugs and the slug damage to your plants diminishes. It is very difficult to completely eliminate all snails and slugs all summer long in your garden. But you can reduce the damage caused by slugs to an acceptable level.

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