I Will Prevail Against the Slugs!

For the last few weeks I’ve been noticing that my lovely herbs and veggies have holes in them. I couldn’t figure out what was wrong but I guessed bugs of some kind. I went to the lovely Twitter Universe for help and someone told me what was wrong: SLUGS! Slugs are eating my vegetable garden! The little BASTARDS! I had no idea slugs were a bad thing. I’m kind of a newbie at this whole gardening thing.

MY POOR LETTUCE!!! Look at that! Michael found a website on how to make your own slug traps so over the weekend I worked hard on making the traps. Here is what the website traps looked like:

EXAMPLE

The website recommended using two liter bottles. I used 20 ounce plastic bottles because that’s all I had. I made the traps in a makeshift way, not really following the instructions but just sort of doing it my own way. It worked! Especially with duct tape! I found a website that gave ideas on what to use in the traps. I did an experiment: 2 traps with just water and yeast mixed together, one trap with water and yeast and honey mixed together, and one trap with just plain beer.

When I woke up the next morning I excitedly checked my slug traps (how exciting is THAT??) and discovered that the only trap that worked was the one with the beer in it. There were tons of slugs of all sizes in the traps. I was so excited to see that it worked! I also realized that I needed to make MORE traps and put them closer to the plants.

So after work I stopped by the store and bought a bunch of PBR to use for the traps. Only the good stuff for killin’ slugs!

MY TRAP!

I also picked up some organic slug killer that you sprinkle around the base of the plants. I wanted to just use the beer but after seeing the pathetic state of my veggies I was desperate. I picked up some Sluggo and sprinkled it around the plants, too.

I need to do a better job of placing the Sluggo. I saw that some slugs got through it in places.

UPDATE

After about a week of checking daily and reapplying the Sluggo to make the force field stronger, I noticed I was seeing less slugs in the garden beds.

Maybe the slugs had passed the word onto their slug friends that I mean business! The beer seems to be working really well and I’m not having to pick as many slugs out of the garden.

A friend of mine commented that she used to go out with salt and murder them at night, using a flashlight to try to find as many as she could. I laughed at that image of her skulking through the darkness but it’s not far off. I’ve been creeping around the garden with a latex glove on my hand and hand picking out the slugs and throwing them over the fence!

Now I’m faced with the question: do I rip out the lettuce the slugs devoured or leave it be and hope it grows back? I’m a total newbie at this so I’m not sure what to do.

Any advice from more seasoned gardeners? I can use all the help I can get!

QUESTION: What are your gardening tricks for keeping the bugs and slugs away?