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My friend came to me in tears. “Look at this!” she shrieked. It was indeed a hideous sight. Her prized Hosta alba-varigata was chewed to bits and the culprit was the lowly slug.
I told her not to fret. There was an easy and free solution.
“Free? Nothing free really works.” she whined dejectedly.
Oh, ye of little faith! I told her she could go down to the garden center and buy some expensive volcanic earth with a name I can’t pronounce or down at the brewery for some beer (No, not to drown her sorrows but to drown the slugs) or she can just listen to me.
I take egg shells, dry them in my hot greenhouse or in the oven during winter, I crush them and sprinkle them around my plants. Form a solid line and the slugs won’t cross it or die trying. It seems their soft bodies get torn to shreds climbing over the egg shells causing them a painful death. Poor babies!
But, of course for those of you not willing to listen to me there are other solutions. You could stop sleeping at night and hunt the little buggers as they feed. They do their feeding at night, you know so that is when to catch them in the act. I don’t know about you but I’ve got better things to do at midnight and beyond.
There are folks that place wooden boards where there has been slug activity to give the slugs a place to sleep off their twilight binge. Then in the morning as they snooze the slugs can be caught and disposed of. Call me squeamish but that prospect makes me squirm in disgust.
Some darling people, again at night, take their table salt out and sprinkle the nasty creatures killing them almost instantly. I don’t advise that at all. First, if you sprinkle salt on the soil it leaches in becoming toxic to plants. Second, I don’t like to see the snails squirming as if in horrible pain. It just seems so cruel. Yes, more cruel than my eggshell barrier. They can always choose not to cross it. Third, I don’t like the neighbors thinking I’m any stranger than they already think I am. Going around my garden at midnight with a salt shaker in one hand and a flash light in the other will do it.
As for that expensive volcanic dust whose name I can’t pronounce nor spell (spell checker doesn’t help at all ) it works on the same principle as my dried egg shells and I get those for free. I may look dumb but I ain’t!
Yes, some gardeners swear by the drown-them-in-beer method but really, do you want to waste your lovely beer on ungrateful invertebrates? Nor would I like the folks down at the beer distributer to think I’m drinking all that stuff myself. They’ll have a good laugh, don’t you think, if I tell them I’m feeding it to my slugs. And do you have any idea how much beer I would need for my four acres of garden slugs? I’d go broke.
But for those who still think it’s the only way to go but don’t want to waste the good stuff on the slugs make it yourself. You could always grow a Hops vine, collect the hops, place them in water and allow this to ferment. Cheap beer indeed but still attractive to the squishy guys.
Along the same line of baiting slugs into a trap, you can use a bottle (Cola bottle, liter size works best). You cut off the top portion of the bottle, invert it to form a sort of funnel and staple the two pieces together. Then place in the bottom of the bottle a bit of the smelliest cat food you can find, lay the bottle sideways where slug traffic occurs and sit back. This brings the slugs in and supposedly they won’t find their way back out. Why would they? They have a mother-load of food there just for them. In the morning toss the whole thing out, slugs and all.
As for me, I still like my eggshell method best. I save eggshells all winter long and have a good supply for my four acres of garden. The eggshells even fortify the soil adding trace minerals like Calcium which my plants really appreciate. A warning to you. Do tell someone what you are saving the eggshells for. My friend neglected to tell her husband and he threw them away pondering about his wife’s sanity. Don’t let it happen to you.
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Author Bio Box: Glory Lennon
 To find more on gardening visit
http://www.helium.com/user/show/32782.
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