Garden slugs never bothered me until they started eating my vegetable garden, zucchini blossoms to be exact. I had seen slugs before but never realized how much of a pain in my garden they could be. However, it was weeks before I realized what or who was causing the blossoms on our zucchini to fall off the plant overnight.

My zucchini plants looked completely healthy. The only problem was that the blossoms were falling off the plant and no zucchinis were growing. So I asked a few gardening friends from https://essayontime.com.au/essay-writing-help why this would happen and I got the same response from each person. “I’d say you got garden slugs!”

I just had not seen any because they are mostly nocturnal. I go to bed really early, but I’m up at 4 am most days. One day I got up, grabbed my flashlight and headed out to my zucchini patch. To my surprise, there were slugs of all sizes having their way with my zucchini plants.

I spent about 10 minutes picking them out of my zucchini. I squashed each one on the driveway so they wouldn’t be doing anymore eating or reproducing. Then I headed into my office, went online and started learning how to get rid of garden slugs.

Learning About Garden Slugs

For starters slugs are gastropods in the class Gastropoda, they have soft-bodied like mollusks and have no hard external shell like their cousins, the snails. I learned that slugs are hermaphroditic. This means that every slug in your yard is capable of reproducing, even if they are the only slug in your yard and they can lay hundreds of eggs each year, without a partner. How scary is that?

You might think slugs have a short lifespan, but they can, in fact, live a couple of years and reproduce multiple times each year. To make things worse, the offspring can mature in just a few weeks and start reproducing by themselves.

I never thought about looking for slug eggs, so I looked to find a picture of slug eggs. This would help me recognize them more easily. The other thing I don’t like is that each slug is like a teen. They just can’t get filled up.

Next, I started looking for solutions to help get rid of garden slugs.

Home Remedies To Get Rid of Slugs

We don’t use pesticides and prefer to learn green methods of pest control, so I was looking for some home remedies to get rid of garden slugs. Below is what I have found so far.

1. Garden Slugs Want Your Kitchen Scraps

We like to compost everything we can. The less that goes to the local landfill the better. So we keep our kitchen scraps to put in the compost bin. I heard that using a little of the kitchen scraps near the garden or plants slugs are eating, and it will attract them once the night is over as they like cool, damp places to hide out during the daylight hours. Then I can just pick through the scraps and remove slugs and flush them.

Related Reading: Organic Pest Control For Your Garden

2. Slugs Love Hiding In Damp Cardboard

Don’t want to leave kitchen waste around your yard, that’s okay. How about a few pieces of damp cardboard as a hang out for slugs. When the heat of the day arrives slugs look for damp places to hide for the day. Having some damp cardboard around works for them and you will know where to find them.

Again once daylight arrives, they will head for protection in a damp spot. Just wait a few hours and then turn the cardboard over and pick them off. A container with soapy water is a good place to put them while you’re out collecting slugs. Be sure to destroy them away from your yard, like down the flush. I like to flush a couple of times just to make sure they are really gone.

Note: While you are removing the slugs collecting under the cardboard or kitchen scraps be sure to look for their eggs and destroy them.

3. Walking On Crushed Egg Shells

We don’t eat a lot of eggs these days, so it takes a while for us to collect a decent amount of shells. We just put them in a container in the fridge through the winter, and then we can crush them for use in the garden come spring.

The average garden slug doesn’t like walking or slithering on things that are thin and sharp, like egg shells can be when they are crushed a bit and spread around the perimeter of the plants they like to feed on.

4. Get ‘Em Drunk With A Beer Trap

I don’t like wasting beer but if it will help me get rid of slugs without using harsh chemical I am willing to share. Actually, I did this the first year we had a veggie garden, but I didn’t have any luck and just gave up on the idea. I later learned I might not have put the container of beer deep enough in the soil.

I am going to give this method another try and will put the container in the ground so that the top is level with the ground so they can crawl right up to the edge for a taste and then fall in. Plus, there is some beer that doesn’t have enough yeast in it as it’s the yeast that attracts them, Too much yeast in beer gives me migraines, so maybe my choice in beer wasn’t a good pick. This I can fix with baker’s yeast. I will just add a bit more yeast to the beer I use and see how that does.

This article was written by Elizabeth McGregor for Prepper’s Will.

Author’s bio:

Elizabeth McGregor is a content marketer, writer by day and a reader by night. She teaches E-commerce store owners ways to manage and grow their business. She specializes in book descriptions. Now lives in Sacramento, California.

 

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