Slug Life: How to Get Rid of Garden Slugs

Don’t underestimate garden slugs. Just because they’re small and spineless doesn’t mean they can’t do serious damage to your beloved greenery. To deal with infestation of these pesky mollusks, you’re going to need pest control services.

It also doesn’t hurt employing a few do-it-yourself measures to keep the pests at bay while you’re waiting for pest control. Follow these tips and your garden is sure to survive before the cavalry comes in.

Time for Milk or Beer

When you see garden slugs crawling on your garden soil, it’s time to employ guerilla warfare with traps — milk or beer traps, that is. These traps stop them in their slimy tracks, giving you enough time to catch and kill them.

Here’s how to install the traps:

• Dig deep holes and put cups in them. Make sure they are raised half an inch above the ground.
• Fill the cups halfway with milk or beer.
• Replace the contents after a few days. If the slugs manage to climb out, use a boiled mix of honey, yeast, and water instead. This concoction should be too sticky for the slugs to escape from.

With milk or beer, you won’t have to worry about slugs eating your plants.

Their Last Meal

Milk and/or beer traps not working as expected? Then it’s time to kill them with kindness by feeding them with cornmeal. This actually works; to the little slugs, eating cornmeal is like snacking on a grenade, as this foodstuff expands inside a slug’s body.

Lay a jar down in key spots in the garden, put two tablespoons of cornmeal, wait for a slug to feast on it, and it’s good as finished.

Trap and Throw

If you think that killing these pests is a little bit too merciless for you and definitely not your style, don’t worry. There are more humane series of steps to get rid of them – literally, not figuratively. Here’s what you should do:

• Set up areas that can become dark and damp. Good examples would be pots, cardboard boxes, and plywood.
• To entice the slugs, you can use cabbage leaves, citrus rinds, and pet food.
• Check them every day to make sure that the trap is working.

• Once it has a lot of slugs, throw the trap, along with the slugs, far away from your residence.

The Night Hunter

If the slugs that are infesting your garden seem too smart to be caught by simple traps, it’s time for you to take a more drastic action. It’s time for you to hunt — at night.

Slugs are not very active at night, so it’s easy to catch them under your plants’ leaves. If you don’t mind getting your hands dirty, impale them with a stick. But if you’re more of the benevolent kind, dropping them in a bucket of soapy water should be enough.

No matter how slug-infested the front has become, you can’t and shouldn’t give up; the beauty of your garden is at stake. Remember, when slugs hit you, you have to slug back.