Today it was time to face facts. The local frog population have obviously snubbed my pond and the slugs that I have been saving as amphibian delicacies have been having a whale of a time in my compost bin, procreating merrily and sniggering behind my back. Something clearly needs to be done if I ever hope to grow intact lettuces.
So, today marked the first assault on the slug flotilla.
There appear to be a number of options for dispatching slugs. You can squish them, a simple option but slug slime is stickier than melted chewing gum and its not the sort of thing you want lingering on the bottom of your shoe. Slug pellets are another obvious choice but are pretty damaging to the rest of the wildlife and would probably ensure I never see a frog or hedgehog on my plot again, plus I wouldn’t want them near my food. You can also purchase special slug hating nematodes which are apparently approved of by the soil association and other organic gardening watchdogs but although I can accept that nematodes already exist in my soil I am just not going to enjoy eating my cabbage when I know I’ve just watered it with a solution of parasitic worms. That leaves me with a painless option that I read about in my magazine yesterday - death by drowning.
I wiped about 30 beasties from the side of my compost bin into an inch of water in bucket. Almost immediately the slime factories puffed up a little and seemed to turn pale. Happy with a job well done, I turned away and carried on with my mammoth digging task.
10 minutes later I happened to be passing the bucket and saw at least 28 slugs fighting for pole position at the rim of the bucket. I sloshed more water in from a height and knocked them back into the drink. 10 mins later the process had to be repeated, this time I added a dash of my beer dregs that I have been saving for months, thinking this would encourage them to linger for a bit longer.
I must have been a bit tight with the beer because, you guessed it, 10 mins later they are back at the rim. Now I’m scraping them off with my spade and stirring vigorously. Its turning into quite a frenzied killing session and I’m not feeling too good about it. Who said drowning was painless? The darn creatures just won’t play dead. Perhaps I have cultivated a specific variety of deep sea diving slugs.
After 6 hrs on the plot it was time to go but the slugs were still not finished, I sliced a couple of particularly feisty specimens with my secateurs and left the others to their own devices.
I would say the slugs won the first battle. I need to go back armed with a more humane and effective form of execution. If only the frogs would turn up, then I wouldn’t have deal with all this unpleasantness.
Pictures omitted for obvious reasons.
10 responses so far ↓
1 hedgewitch // Mar 30, 2008 at 10:33 pm
I love this post .. but poor you!!
I’m not sure I can help (one of the ONLY advantages of growing stuff in pots on the roof is no slugs, lol)
We did have a horrible slug problem at a house I lived in as a student - they used to get in the kitchen at night - gives me shivers to even think about it! Beer traps did seem to work.
Good luck in your crusade
2 Melanie // Mar 31, 2008 at 1:21 am
Here we make an organic slug spray. It’s one part household cleaning ammonia and 5 parts water. Spray it on the slugs and watch them die. Best of all, if you do this on plant material you won’t hurt your plants.
So the next time you have a bucket with water, only fill it a few inches, add some ammonia and then knock those slugs in the bucket. Be ready to laugh your evil BWAHAHA laugh as they turn to goo.
3 Nancy Bond // Mar 31, 2008 at 3:26 am
I laughed out loud as I read this — they really are the most stubborn of creatures. Loved the image of you stirring the slug brew with your spade.
I’ve had some success luring the slugs into beer traps, and I’ve also been told that coarsely broken egg shells distributed along bed edges will discourage them, as they apparently don’t like to crawl over the jagged shells. For sheer entertainment value, your method is best, I’m sure. Pesky, destructive things.
4 jogblog // Mar 31, 2008 at 7:31 am
Poor slugs.
5 VP // Mar 31, 2008 at 12:18 pm
Hi - you could try the couch grass spearing method I blogged about last week.
I’ve found that adding salt to the water tends to do the job a little quicker…
6 dee // Mar 31, 2008 at 11:57 pm
Hubs and i play a game of chicken with the slugs on our lottie.. Chuck slug over fence then cheer when one gets squished by passing car
7 Chris // Apr 1, 2008 at 5:17 pm
I do feel for you, we have a big problem with slugs in the garden! We do drown some in beer, dare I say the really cheap Tesco Value bitter, in tin cans seems to finish them off but off course they multipy faster than I can buy beer! We’ve tried all sorts of other remedies which just don’t work
Salt water is recommended for drowning but even though they eat my veg and flowers I can’t bring myself to use it.
8 Earthwoman // Apr 7, 2008 at 8:39 am
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9 Louise Joly // Apr 12, 2008 at 8:32 pm
I love hearing about your slugs climbing out of the bucket of water. That’s what happened to me last year. I couldn’t believe it! Luckily we have a channel of water about 15 foot deep next to us, so I threw them in there. Don’t think they can get out of there so easily… Anyway its interesting reading this as today have used the nematodes for the first time ever. I will see what happens.
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