SCORES & OUTDOORS: Slugs, they’re everywhere! And now, how to control them

The common slug

by Roland D. Hallee

Slugs! They can truly do a lot of damage to your plants, like they did to mine this past spring. They like damp places, feed at night and prefer tender new growth and seedlings.

Last week we learned about slugs, this week we will talk about how to control them.

Here are a few general tips on how to deal with slugs:

• Seedling protection: Protect your seedlings with 2-3 liter plastic soda bottles. Make sure no slugs are around the seedlings first. Cut the bottoms out of the bottles, sink them into the soil around the seedlings and remove the caps. You can reuse them over and over.
• Mulch: Keep mulch pulled away from the base of your plants. Consider waiting to apply mulch until the soil temperatures have warmed to above 75°F.
• Garden debris: Keep all decaying matter cleaned out of your garden beds. Clear all dead leaves and debris from the garden on a regular basis and put it in the compost pile which is best located in an area away from the garden.
• Slug havens: The shaded areas beneath decks can be a slug arena. Keep them weed and litter free.

You can also build barriers around your garden:

• Use cedar, oak bark chips or gravel chips which will irritate and dehydrate them.
• Try a barrier line or an overall sprinkle of powdered ginger.
• Use wood ashes as a barrier around plants, however try not to let the plant come into contact with the ashes. The ashes act as a desiccant and dry up the slugs.
• Spread well crushed eggshells around the plants. The calcium released from the eggshells is an extra benefit that “sweetens” the soil. The sharp edges of the shells will kill slugs.
• Talcum powder works as a barrier but must be replenished after rainfall or watering.

Finally, there is always the slug trap method:

• Beer or yeast traps: A traditional trap that seems to work well is to place containers of beer or yeast and water at one inch above the ground level in the garden to entice and drown your prey. Empty traps as needed. For the yeast trap, use one package of yeast to 8 ounces of water.
• Grape juice: A new rendition on the beer trap is to use grape juice. For some reason slugs really have a taste for this. Use just as you would in the beer method and buy the cheapest grape juice you can find.
• Beer batter bait: Mix 2 tablespoons of flour with enough beer to make a thick batter. Put 1 teaspoon of this in a small paper cup and lay the cups on their sides around your plants. Slugs will flock to this, get snared in the flour and die. When the trap is full toss the whole thing in the compost pile.
• Comfrey: This perennial is a preference of slugs and can be used as a trap. Comfrey is considered to be an invasive plant, however, it has so many uses for the garden and medicinally that it is worth having around. Comfrey has more protein in its leaves than any other vegetable, perhaps explaining its appeal to slugs.

I have comfrey around my garden at home and have had very little problems with slugs. So, I might just transplant some to the garden at camp.

Taking into consideration everything we have learned about slugs in the last two weeks, the more I think about it, slugs remind me of college students: They suck up available resources, give very little in return, and they like to drink beer. They even prefer the same beers (a study conducted by students at Colorado State University concluded the slug’s favorite beers are Budweiser products).

Roland’s trivia question of the week:

How many New York Yankees players have recorded 3,000 career hits with the team?