Any Natural Slug Control Work?

[Tabby]

I love some advice on what works for slugs on hostas. I can't use pesticides because we have a lot of birds, a cat, a creek and it's against the law in Ontario now!

I've tried beer in a saucer and have had some limited success. I've been reading on the 'net that coffee grinds and crushed up egg shells work. T

Anything you people could suggest would be very much appreciated.

Cheers and happy gardening,
Diane

[Kas]

A duck or a sharp stick!

Kas

[sugar]

I have a small garden, so I know this isn't possible for many of the people active on this forum...
I just go out hunting at night, everytime it rains the first time after a drought.
There are lots of slugs all over the garden that you can eliminate.

From time to time, I put a some pieces of melon, bananas peal, a cucumbers in the garden. The next day, you'll find several slugs underneath them..

A third natural way are slug traps : put some beer in a glass, the slugs are attracked by the yeast of the beer and killed by the alcohol.

Over here in Europe, tehre are also nematodes available that live as a parasite on slugs (not snails). But from what I've understood, they are not available in the US

[Tigger]

Surely ON wouldn't classify household ammonia as a forbidden pesticide. You can use it two ways:

Right now, when the hostas are just coming up (where you are, anyway), drench the crowns (1–2 L per plant) with a solution of household ammonia mixed 1:10 or even 1:12 with water (that is, 80–100 mL of ammonia solution into 1 L of water). This kills slugs, and their eggs, around the crown of the plant where they hide. You have to do this before the leaves are all up, because the ammonia can burn them. You want the solution to get to the ground.

All season, you can mix up the same solution and go slug hunting at night. Put the solution in a spray bottle and spray the little slimers. This works like putting salt on them, but doesn't leave salt residue in your garden. This works well in conjunction with the bait approach (melon rinds, etc.) above.

Either way, the ammonia also works as a fertilizer, but it shouldn't burn your plants if applied in these amounts. And if applied in the evening, when animals are not active, no harm to them. The ammonia vapors will dissipate by morning.

[Noreaster]

I have tried the saucers of beer and have found it to be completely inffective ..don't know if it's the kind of slugs I have or what. I found the pet safe bait (iron phosphate) to be inffective, too. I'd put a ton of it down, and then go out and see slugs crawling all over the place, eating the hosta instead of the abundant bait. Because I have dogs, I won't use anything with Methaldehyde.

Last summer I tried putting down leaves of romaine lettuce all over the place, which is highly attractive to the slugs. Then I'd go out in the evening (every evening!) with a headlamp and a pump sprayer of water:ammonia (15:1) and look on, under, and around the lettuce. Found and killed tons and tons of slugs that way. Also, they seem to like the lettuce even more than hosta leaves, so it gave them an alternative. Yes, it takes a huge effort (and my garden is pretty small), but my hosta never looked better than they did last year with that protocol.

The other thing I do with a few slug favorite hosta is surround the base with a three-four inch high collar made of copper foil. The tricky part of that is that you have to make sure there are no gaps at the bottom for them to slip under, or any leaves touching the ground outside the collar or other nearby plants. And you have to make sure that there aren't any hiding in there before you put the collars on. But if you can do all that, the collars work great. The ones I had in those were virtually untouched all season. (Liberty, Stained Glass, and Diana Remembered) It will not keep out the ones that rapel down from the trees, like this one, but it will keep most of them out! But of course it doesn't kill them, and I'm all about killing them to keep the population in check. Hence the nightly hunts with diluted ammonia. Mostly I'm using the ammonia on the sluggy lettuce, but I do also put the wand of the sprayer down into the middle of the petioles, because one of the most annoying things the slugs here do is chew holes in those, causing them to collapse. I try to avoid spraying the hosta leaves.

[Noreaster]

p.s., I've tried the coffee grounds (Starbucks gives them away) and found it somewhat effective when I used a lot of them like a barrier....but that only lasted until they got wet from rain or watering. So for me, that was way too much work to have to keep reapplying them. Also I think Starbucks couldn't provide enough grounds for me to keep doing that.

[nanny_56]

I have been using the ammonia method and also use romaine lettuce leaves as bait in the beds to attract the slugs. I then put them in a bucket that has a small amount of the ammonia mix! I check 2-3 times thru the evening. When I started this about 3 weeks ago I was getting up to 20 a night. Last night I had 1. I have also sprayed the beds a couple of times during the day and around the base of the plants that are leafed out.

Correcting typos...

[Tabby]

Thanks very much for all your answers, Kas (LOL), Nanny, Sugar, Tigger and Noreaster (ew, that's some slug!)

I guess it's pretty much unanimous that you all like the ammonia treatment. I had not come across that one in my searching, so I'm really glad I asked you!

Thanks again, and happy gardening. I will be trying the ammonia!

Diane

[Noreaster]

Tonight was the first night I went out hunting this year. I really haven't been seeing any slugs as I work in the garden (not too many, anyway), but noticed some damage starting on the emerging pips and tender young leaves that are unfurling. So I put out some lettuce, and sure enough, there they were! The only problem is that the trees haven't leafed out enough to provide a lot of shade, so the lettuce dries and shrinks a bit with the sun during the day. When there is shade, it lasts for quite a long time until it gets completely eaten.

[renaldo75]

So slugs can 'fall' from the sky!! That was my question from last fall after finding slugs in the center of hostas I'd planted. There was no slug damage to the hostas here last fall and I'd never had a slug problem before where my hostas had always lived. I will be keeping a close watch on the hostas in that area again to see if there are any signs this spring.

Glad to know about the romaine lettuce and ammonia. That will help if I see any.

One reason I think I've never had a slug problem in my SW Iowa gardens is that I never used mulch. There was no cool, dark place for them to hide during the day.

That being said, I do plan on using a ground cover this year that is sold as a 'soil conditioner'. It's very small pieces of bark that everyone in the ROHS club that's used it previously says is a definite slug deterrent. They don't like crawling on it. Let's hope they're correct. I don't need to have a slug problem in my garden this year of all years.

[Noreaster]

Yes, that's a problem for me, hiding places. Mulch or no mulch, there are just too many places for them to hide out around here. I've read that slugs don't like to crawl on pine needles, so that is a mulch option. However, I have two tall pines that drop a lot of needles over my beds and I can tell you that the slugs here have no problem whatsoever crawling over pine needles to get to a hosta.

Groundcovers like sedum will give them hiding places, too.

It seems like certain parts of the country don't have anywhere near the slug problems that others do. I don't know anyone with a garden up here that doesn't have slugs, and usually a lot of them.

[twoblackdogs]

A couple years ago I read in Fine Gardening that dryer lint ringed around the base of the plant helps. I tried it last year on a couple plants that are serious slug snacks and it did seem to work, so I will be trying it on more this year. Supposely the fibrous lint prevents them forming the slime trail that helps them move.

[jgh]

wow... I wonder if there might be a recycling-green business opportunity here... if we could just harness the power of dryer lint across the country!!!

and Dustbunnies!!! If they are effective, I could probably find some big enough to protect a few good sized hostas...

[ViolaAnn]

Tabby - where are you in Ontario?

A friend told me that she found ammonia on a list of forbidden things in Ontario, but I couldn't find it myself and until I do, I shall continue to use it on my hostas.1:10 as a pre-emergent drench at this time of year. 1:15 or even 1:20 later in the season, but I generally dump it at the base of the plants.

I also treat my sedum because the slugs take refuge there.

And later in the season, I keep a spray bottle with added insecticidal soap because a lot of the damage to MY hostas is done by earwigs.

Ann

[digs57]

I use diatomite; I get it in 25-lb bags from a pool supply store. This is the best time of the year to apply it, when the hosta eyes are already above ground but the leaves not yet unfurled (mostly, in my garden). I put liberal amounts of it on and around the crown. Diatomite has strictly physical deterrent properties - it's amorphous silica skeletons, well known for having many sharp spikes on the surface, of marine plankton, and is insoluble and non-toxic. I think it works best by disrupting the thinnest biological membranes, ie, slug eggs and young slugs.

During mid-late season I set out tuna cans of a yeast solution; I don't use beer, as it's the yeast not alcohol that slugs are attracted to, and yes, they do come in and drown in it. I drink the beer instead - much cheaper and more fun all round.

D.

[flowerchild59]

Thanks for all of the ideas everyone. And is diatomite the same as diatomaceous earth?

[digs57]

Um. Yeah, I guess it is. Diatomaceous earth (aka cristoballite, aka amorphous silica) is listed as one of the ingredients on my bag of "swimming pool filter powder", the other being crystalline silica, aka, ordinary quartz sand. I think the sand is included to prevent accusations of false advertising, seeing as it's near impossible to prevent ordinary sand dust from settling on anything on this fine Earth of ours....

[twoblackdogs]

I forgot to add my other natural method - house wrens! I have 3 wren houses throughout my yard - 2 hang over hosta beds. Wrens love slugs, and when they have babies to feed, they are very busy getting slugs... Mr. Wren is out there sitting on the house singing away right now.

I just saw in one of my magazines about using citrus rinds as traps as well. Haven't tried that.

[Noreaster]

I tried grapefruit halves last year and didn't catch anything with that. Dampened boards do work as traps...you just overturn them in the morning and kill what you find. I will try the lint thing this year, too. I've been going out every night for the last few weeks and killing what I find on the lettuce traps. I'm starting this regime two months earlier than last year, so I'm hoping it will have an impact for the season. So far things are looking great.

[Tabby]

Thank you so much everyone!