What is the best way to rid my garden of slugs?

Question

What is the best way to rid my garden of slugs?

Answer 1

Slugoo as mentioned is the best..and it is pet safe..It contains iron phosphate as the main ingredient which is pet safe..

http://www.biconet.com/crawlers/sluggo.h...

Other snail baits contain ..metaldehyde  which is very toxic to animals and reswembles pet food and attracts them to eating it..A person just last week here on yahoo Q&A posted a warning about snail baits inwhich killed her dog(a chow i believe)...Snail baits contribute to most all poisioning cases of pets than any other insecticide..here is some info on it..use SLUGGO..and no other snail bait..

http://www.marvistavet.com/html/body_sna...

Answer 2

Three inches of concrete over all of it - There is no way of ever getting rid of slugs from your garden , the best you can do is put some slug pellets or slug traps down and hope for the best.

Slug Trap - bury a jar in the ground next to a plant (up to its lip) and put a little beer in the bottom - next day it will be full of slugs.

DO NOT USE SALT it will kill any plants you have in the graden and the soil will not grow anything for at least a year!

Answer 3

     I have heard of 2 different ways. If there in your garden and you just want to try to get them gone.They say put a pie pan on the ground and pour beer isupposedly and is suposidly kills them.

     If they are crawling up your plants and eating on them eg. Hosta's wrap a piese of copper foil you can get at any craft section (it is very thin) a small piece around the plant just near the bottem of the plant and they will not climb across it.  

     Never tried it myself but my sister had a hughe Hosta garden and the foil worked great.

Answer 4

the beer traps work great, as do slug pellets..and for on the spot treatment, you cant beat a bit of salt

Answer 5

Salt!  or little cubes of salt around your garden. :)  not sure if that will work, but salt kills slugs and cant harm a garden!

Answer 6

Sluggo rules! We had them so bad when we bought this house they would climb up the walls. We were killing 400 a night, night after night, for the longest time. Then we put Sluggo out, and they were gone in a few days and they haven't been back. It is safe for pets, too.

Good luck!

Answer 7

You have some good answers there - particularly the beer traps and copper foil.  Apparently they dont like crossing human hair either so if you cut your own hair, put the cut hair around your plants.  I want to make one point about the hedgehogs though.  Contrary to popular belief, slugs are not one of a hedgehogs favourite meals.  They will only eat them if there is nothing else to eat.  Slugs contain parasites that cause lungworm infections in hedgehogs which leads to a slow and painful death so please, do not rely on hedgehogs to eat your slugs and if you do find you have hedgehogs in your garden you should feed them so they dont need to eat slugs.  Canned catfood (not in gravy) chicken flavour is best.  Bread and milk is also not good for them.

Answer 8

Encourage hedgehogs and frogs into your garden, or beer/cider traps work well, cider turns them orange and the birds get pissed eating them lol

Answer 9

another HOORAY! for Sluggo or any of the other baits that containd IRON PHOSPHATE.... I have quite a time with them in my shady woodland garden and the hostas... this stuff saved my sanity!.... safe for kids pets and wildlife, too... turns to fertilizer if not eaten by a slug or snail.....and you don't have to pick up gooey dead slugs, either!... they crawl away and hide to die!!... *smile*.......just be sure, like PC said, that you got the right ingredient... IRON PHOSPHATE!!!....

and to keep them off specific plants in the meantime, coffee grounds around the plant and spray cold coffee ON the plant....does pretty good, but of course, the slugs will keep trying... better to just bait and kill 'em!!!

we start using the baits before the hostas have broke ground in spring... where the new sprouts are, is where the slugs that survived last year, if any, tend to lay eggs... so the first hatchlings get their first meal of bait right away!!!..... doing this, we cut the numbers right quick....