I received this comment from Joe recently and because my answer was so long, I thought I would blog about it.
Hello,
I have a quick question you might be able to answer for me. I have slugs eating my ripe berries (strawberries), what can I do about them ??? Thanks in advance…
The following was my answer to Joe:
Hi Joe,
Slugs and tomato hornworms are two of the most annoying pests in the garden. Many nights, I have been out after dark with a flashlight looking for the little suckers. Growing up in Vancouver, our favorite pastime was to grab the salt shaker and go slug hunting . . . . but I digress.
There is a number of things you can do to control the slugs that are getting at your strawberries. Because I like to stay as organic as possible, I will give you the organic options first.
ORGANIC:
Slugs need moisture. They sleep during the day in a moist, dark area and come out at night to munch. If you have mulch in your garden, that can be one of the many places they are hiding out during the day. Also check around the area for any wood, rocks, pots, anywhere moist that they might hide and remove these. If you do not want to or cannot remove them, make sure to check under them every morning for any slugs that are hiding there or any eggs and get rid of them.
Speaking of eggs, you definitely want to go on the hunt and destroy any eggs you may find. They are little egg clusters that look kind of like tapioca.
You can also place a wooden board near your strawberries and check there every morning as well. Kind of like baiting them with a nice place to keep cool during the day!
You can do as I have done and head out after dark with a flashlight and salt shaker in hand
I have tried the beer method with quite a bit of success. Place a shallow container of beer where they can find it. They love it and will crawl in and drown.
The idea is to get rid of as many slugs as possible along with their moist hiding places which will hopefully deter them.
NON-ORGANIC:
If you are still having a problem a slug bait might be the way to go. Something like Sluggo or any commercial slug bait you can find at your local garden center or Home Depot.
Make sure you follow the instructions keeping in mind any pets or small children that may be around.
I found the site below that gives some more great tips on slug control. My favorite is the last one where you put a bounty on their head and let the kids go at it
Note: Please come back and let me know what you decided to do and how successful it was for you. Enjoy your strawberries!
Postcript: I did some research and stand corrected. Sluggo is sold as an organic slug bait. I found the following online store where you can buy it (if you live in one of the states that they ship it to). Although it is quite expensive, I have seen lots of good feedback on the product. It would depend on how widespread your slug problem is whether the cost would be worth it or not. This company also sells a slug trap with organic bait in it. I have no idea how well it works but might be a cheaper alternative if the beer method doesn’t work for you.
Another Organic Tip For Controlling Slugs:
There has been research done on using coffee grounds to control slugs. Apparently, the caffeine will kill the slugs. They walk through it, absorbing the caffeine and it kills them. Put a thick layer of used coffee grounds around the base of the plants that are being affected. Coffee grounds are quite high in nitrogen as well, so this will give your plants an extra boost of nitrogen which the plants will love!
Does anybody else have any tips to help Joe control his slug problem?
{ 14 comments… read them below or add one }
That is great information. Do you have any suggestions for how to handle pea plants that start to go brown before they produce??
Hi Val,
Great question. One of the most common diseases to pea plants is root rot. It is caused by a fungus in the soil and attacks the roots of the plant eventually causing the leaves to turn yellow/brown. Another common problem, more so in the Pacific Northwest/Western Canada area, is wilt disease. This is also caused by a fungus in the soil.
Unfortunately, there probably isn’t too much that you can do to save them at this point. If you would like to know what is causing the problem, you can pull up one or two plants and check the roots carefully. If they are mushy and sick-looking then you know it was root rot. They will be easier to pull out than plants that are healthy or that have wilt disease. Plants with wilt disease will still have healthier-looking roots.
The only way to control either of these disease is to plant your peas on a 5-year rotation. This means that you should not plant peas in any area of the garden where peas have grown before for 5 years. On year six, you can start the rotation over again. The fungus that is in the soil should be gone by then. Also make sure that your soil is well drained and that you plant your seeds early in the spring. It would be helpful to know which disease killed the plants as you may be able to find seeds that are more resistant to that particular disease.
Hope this helps. Good luck!
Do you pick potatoes before, during or after they flower?
You can begin to harvest your potatoes 2-3 weeks after they flower. Dig down very carefully and you will find small, baby potatoes. These are what you buy in the grocery store called “new potatoes”. They are my favorite! I like to take just enough for a meal or two and leave the rest to keep on growing. You can keep on harvesting this way throughout the summer as they grow bigger.
If you would like to keep some potatoes for winter storage then wait until about 2 weeks after the plant turns black and dies. You can then carefully dig the rest up. Do not wash them. Leave them on the surface of the soil to dry for about 3 days or inside if the weather is wet and damp. This toughens the skin that will protect them during storage. If they are really dirty, you can just brush the dirt off with your hand. Store them in a dark cool place and they should keep for three to six months. Make sure you don’t store any potatoes that you may have accidentally damaged while digging them up as they will rot. You can eat those ones right away.
Tip for next year: Don’t grow potatoes in the same soil for 3 years. This will help with pest and disease control keeping your potatoes happy and healthy.
Enjoy!
Does anyone have a non-beer recipe? I hate to waste perfectly good beer. I live in the woods and removing all the leaves, rocks, etc. is just not possible. I used to have chickens that took care of the slug problem but I don’t have them anymore. We have had a lot of rain in May and June in my area of Pennsylvania and my driveway is loaded with slugs each morning! I believe there is a recipe with yeast and possible sugar but I don’t know it. If anyone does have it, I would appreciate it. The slugs are destroying my scarlet sage and pansies.
I live in North Jersey and have battled slugs since I moved here 28 years ago. I believe our acid soil is part of the problem. Beer, salt and all those are way too slow for me. Beer actually does not work well at all, the big ones just swim through it. I hunt the suckers with bamboo barbecue skewers, line them up on it and then plant it in the sun. One misty Sunday I nailed over 250 of them.
This year we are seeing giant slugs on a regular basis, both here and in our community garden. 5 – 6″ long. This I found is a different species than the common slug, and they are very destructive. One control you did not mention is diatomaceous earth. This is also expensive, but I have found it to be an excellent control and not as unsightly as slug baits. Crushed egg shells are also purported to work well, although I think we have too many here for the egg shell treatment. It could work where the problem is not so severe.
Thanks for the tips Mary! I had a good laugh picturing the slugs lined up on bamboo skewers. After nailing 250, you deserved to sit and drink that nice cold beer instead of turning it into a swimming pool for your “guests”
You are absolutely right about diatomaceous earth. It causes small cuts in the slugs when they crawl through it and leads to dehydration. Another thing that works in much the same way is ground oyster shells. You can get a bag of it at any feed store. We feed it to the chickens to give them calcium. It may work better in rainy areas as the water won’t affect them as it does diatomaceous earth.
I feel for you with those huge slugs. That was about the size of the ones we had in Vancouver, BC. We spent many hours dousing them in salt and watching them shrivel up.
Lorrie – I found this gardening website that has a recipe for a yeast/sugar mixture to attract slugs much like beer does.
Try it out and let us know how it worked.
HTH
Shelly
You mentioned you found a website with a recipe for a yeast/sugar mixture to attract slugs, but didn’t post it. I would love to have it. We have the 5-6 inch kind, and they look like dog turds, with a green tinge. I will not touch them and they are slow to die with salt.
I like the oyster shell idea, and will probably try it at the door to ;my greenhouse. I would hate eggs to get in there.
Geez Lillian. I must have been having one of those days! LOL! Obviously, there was supposed to be a link to the site. I have added it now.
The instructions are basically this:
You start with 2 one-quart Mason jars. Pour 2 cups of warm water into one. Add 1 packet (or the equivalent which is 2 1/4 tsp) of dry yeast, 1 tsp of salt and 1 tsp sugar to the water. Mix it up thoroughly and divide it evenly between the two jars. Bury each jar into soft garden soil at an angle so the lower lip of its opening is just at ground level. The slugs will smell the yeast, travel to its source, crawl in and drown. Every 2 or 3 days you will probably have to empty them. Start all over again if needed. Place these yeast-trap jars every 6 to 8 feet where populations are high.
Cheers!
Shelly
won’t the salt kill the plants as well? how much is just enough? we had a lot of rain in winnipeg this year and yesterday, i found the slugs crawling all over my tomatoes and causing holes on them. this morning i found clusters of tapioca-like eggs around the roots of my uprooted beans. thanks for the information here cause i was looking for some answers whether i should dump the soil or save it (since i didn’t know what they were at first).
Hi Maria,
I’m sorry that somehow I missed your comment on my blog from way back. I hope you had better luck with slugs this past summer. Obviously, being that you are in Winnipeg (I am in BC), you do not have an outdoor garden at the moment. In answer to your question about the salt damaging your plants, you are right. I would not be dumping a whole bunch of salt in the garden and around the plants. It could cause damage to your plants and even change the quality of your garden soil. A little once in awhile is okay but if you have many slugs then I would move them to a better place before I “salted” them. How much salt is enough? Depends on the size of the slug. Just use a salt shaker and once you do it, you will know how much to use.
Cheers!
Shelly
I go out at nite , slug-slaying, armed with a “squirt bottle” filled with Isopropyl Alcohol. This seems to work better than salt without the harmful residual effects.
Hey Gerry, thanks for the tip! I have never heard that one before.
For those who don’t know, Isopropyl Alcohol is rubbing alcohol and you can pick it up at your local pharmacy.