Welcome to Slugfest '09!

Slug

Welcome to the land of slugfest or should I ask, "Got slugs?" Holy cow are there a lot of slugs in our garden. I've never seen anything like this before.

"Slugs look like snails that have misplaced their shells. They grow between ½ to 3 inches long (.5 to 6 cm) and have soft, slimy bodies of grey, black or brown. Slugs will chew everything, shoots, buds, leaves, flowers and ripe fruit to pieces. Nothing is safe from them if it touches the ground. Their ‘eyes’ are at the tips of their antennae with which they also smell.

The soft, slimy bodies of slugs are prone to drying out so land-living slugs are confined to moist environments and are forced to retreat to damp hiding places when the weather is dry. Slugs eat by using their "radula" which is a rough, tongue-like organ to soften their food." (Taken from various Internet pages)

So now that we know what slugs are, where they like to live, and how they eat; how do we get rid of them because they are doing a number on my garden? And the weather says rain for the next week! So much moisture = so many more slugs.

One website says to sprinkle ground ginger around the plants after rain. But that sounds like an awful lot of ginger. It also says toads eat slugs so shallow trays of 2" of water placed in shady spots will attract toads. Time to get the water trays out! Another good reason to not use pesticides in the garden. Don't want to hurt the toads! The last time I had a problem like this my kids were little and I put out shallow saucers of beer. I guess they like beer because the next morning the saucers were full of dead slugs. Remember to use cheap but fresh beer not something like expensive local microbrews! Another site says to use coffee. "New research has found caffeine to be very effective at dispatching slugs. Save the dregs of old coffee and spray them full strength directly on the beasts in the evening. Surround plants under attack with a mulch of used coffee grounds to deter slugs and feed the plants." That's easy enough to do. So beer and coffee it is.

Toads, and beer, and coffee..oh my!