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Nibbled lettuce leaves and damaged vegetables – this can be a gardener’s view of his crop after a slug invasion. They come mainly after rainy days. They can destroy an entire crop in a single night, they are voracious and come in large numbers. They especially enjoy various kinds of lettuce.
Slugs won’t disdain carrots or potatoes
Slugs mainly love salads, but cruciferous vegetables won’t stop them either. They’ll also gladly go for strawberries or other fruit if they’re hungry. How to defend against them so they no longer come into your garden and ruin the crop? The slugs’ greatest enemy is dryness. That’s why it’s good to leave garden watering until the evening or do it early in the morning. Pour the water directly to the roots so it isn’t on the surface and slugs won’t be tempted to crawl toward it.
Their natural enemies are snails. They feed on slug eggs and can therefore help you a lot with removing slugs, although they sometimes nibble on lettuce themselves. You can also fight slugs with ordinary wood ash. If you have a house where you burn wood in a fireplace, store the ash, for example in a metal bucket. In the garden you can then use it against pests; slugs can’t stand ash.
Try using a beer trap
You may feel sorry for this delicious drink, but slugs love it too. If you prepare a bowl, preferably shallow, full of beer and place it where you think slugs appear most often, the beer’s yeast will attract them like a magnet. They get into the bowl, but won’t be able to get back out. Replace the beer in the bowl every two days or as needed; you’ll certainly find several slugs in them each day.
Slugs don’t like the smell of garlic, just like aphids or other insects. If you prepare a spray from this vegetable, you can win against slugs in the long term. Put four large cloves of garlic into a liter of boiling water, let it boil for 5 minutes, and finally remove the cloves. Wait for it to cool, pour the solution into a sprayer and you can spray the soil around the plants with it. You’ll see that slugs will avoid that area.
You don’t have to buy poisons from the store
If you want to drive slugs away without killing them, you don’t have to go to stores for chemical granules or other sprays. As a quick help you can use regular ground coffee, which you sprinkle around the vegetables you want to protect. Other methods to get rid of slugs include coarse salt mixed with cigarette ash.
Crush eggshells and mix them with the coffee mentioned earlier. It acts as a fertilizer and works great as a repellent not only for slugs but also for ants. You can also try oatmeal, which you just sprinkle around vegetables and fruit; if a slug eats it, the oats will swell in its digestive system. Coffee poured onto ordinary sawdust will act as a poison. Instead of bowls with beer you can also use plastic bottles: pour beer into them and then just wait for the slugs to drown. You can then pour them out in a place where other animals will feed on them.
