No wonder I have a snail/slug problem!!

you know when i started my gardens not a slug. then last year i saw a few. this year i think they have all moved into my yard from miles around. how do these insects know that you now have there favorite meal planted in your garden bed. what do they have little road signs saying "foxgloves this way", "brugs just two doors down", or maybe they have little radio's or tv's and they are listenng to the latest news on who bought what at the garden center today? do you think they have computers? lol
one will make a thousand weez? please don't tell me that is true. boo hoo boo hoo

Whenever I ask a new gardener about slugs, they always say, "Oh, I don't have any!" I said the same thing in my first year or two of gardening." I call it the gardener's honeymoon period. Within a year or two, the slugs find them and they are crying the blues like the rest of us! LOL!

Mollybee, remember one culture's yuckies are another culture's delicacies! Making gelatin from old horse hooves might seem pretty disgusting to someone else!

Eeeeewwwww...you guys are making my stomach turn!! LOL

Diatomaceous Earth....or D.E. at a pool supply place. It is ground up shells used in pool filters. Those nasty critters won't crawl over it because it is sharp. It hurts them!!! It will do the trick and much cheaper than the marketed slug & snail remedies!

Great lead, Brinda ~ thanks :)

Brinda, What has been your experience with Diatomaceous Earth when it rains or you are watering your beds? Does it hold up under those circumstances?

LOL I've just found this thread
None of us will be able to give jelly to our kids ever again!

I've never eaten slugs, but have munched quite a few snails in my time. They're not too bad - but the trick is to smother them in garlic butter

I use fine (or even coarse) grit round particularly vulnerable plants. But I'm luckily not infested with loads of slugs - too dry here. However I've noticed the snail population is pretty healthy, but am lucky to have song thrushes on the case. I find more empty shells than full ones ;o))
Look forward to hearing about the diatomasceous earth...

Garlic butter....hmmmm. I have only eaten snails (escargot) once, and was surprised to hear that the restaurant retrieves the shells and uses them for the next batch. Who's to say whether any of the little beasties had shells to begin with!

do not forget DE will also demolished all the good earthworm into oblivion. i know! i learned the hardway. if i did not have very bad health problems this year, i would have done some research prior to using DE http://davesgarden.com/t/384929/Diatomaceous+Earth+

apart from that the DE dust is not good inhaled [can cause lung damage] http://ighawaii.com/naturally/naturalanimal/de.html

LOL Good thought Weez. I've often bought the tinned ones that have their shells in a net bag attached to the tin. Being naive, never thought of that other possibility! Yuck

Thanks for those links MVR, I'm still sticking to no chemicals in the garden, though it's going to make getting rid of my weeds harder

Weezie....
We just sprinkle the DE around the plants that the slugs/snails are after. We normally do it about once a month. The rain and watering do affect it, so it does have to be re-applied! Cheap enough though that it isn't a big deal!

Thanks, Brinda, but I guess it wouldn't be practical here. We are a rainy Alaska coastal region, so it would take lots of re-applying! I have so many beds and pots that it just wouldn't work. I can drop pellets of Sluggo around plants once and only reapply when it is gone or we've had several days of heavy rain and it begins to mold. I guess we all have different weather conditions to consider when we fight these hungry little guys!

u're welcome Philomel.

Carol try this site, maybe give u some info http://ghorganics.com/page13.html#Slug Facts:

That's a wonderful Slug site, MaVie. We have lots of slugs here, since we have all the conditions they like... cool and moist!

must be slug haven in ur area. i read somewhere, sorry could not find it now... coffee grounds are also good to deter slugs. similar to ants they do not like the coffee grounds. got nothing to lose to give it a shot... that is if u drink coffee?

i have tried the coffee grounds on the ants and they work. no slugs or snails in the desert, so i do not really know if it works. good luck on ur quest ;).

My son has tried an interesting experiment with slugs. He says that a slug doesn't live long when placed on rusty steel. I image the texture isn't pleasant, but he thinks that the iron itself bothers them. Sluggo is basically iron phosphate suspended in some flour based pellet. Who knows?

I've been down the slime trail once myself. I tried DE. Didn't work. (And yes, you should wear gloves and a mask when applying it so as not to damage your lungs. And, yes, it will also effect good bugs that you want in the garden, so use it judiciously.) I tried the beer in a saucer. Didn't catch a single slug or snail (blamed it on the cheap beer--Old Milwaukee was the cheapest I could find and I REFUSED to spend good money to give good beer to these slimy creatures). I tried crushed egg shells. They weren't deterred in the least.

One solution I did NOT try was to put copper strips around the garden bed (problem is the slugs were probably living in the mulch under and around the plants anyway, so what good would it have done???--likely not much). Supposedly the copper carries a slight electric charge which shocks the slugs as they try to cross over it (kinda like when you drag your feet on carpet then touch a metal object and get a big shock). Supposedly it has to be at least 1" wide to be effective. I don't know. As I said I didn't try this one, but some folks swear by it. I myself still swear by the slug/snail bait. It is the one thing that has worked for me. I lost almost $300 worth of plants and 5 weekends worth of work to the slimy critters. The $15 it cost me for a box of bait was more than worth it to me. My only regret was that I didn't find it sooner...

Sluggo/Escargo really works and is NONTOXIC!! Before it was invented, when my kids were little, I used to pay them a penny a snail. That worked too. They would collect them in large glass jars with lids, with a little water in the bottom. I collected them that way too, and cut the slugs with scissors as someone else said. Disgusting, but effective. Also free.

Evidently the snails we have here are the result of a Frenchman bringing some over for food. Following a recipe in the paper I tried it once. You have to put the snails in some kind of container and feed them cornmeal for awhile to get them cleaned out. I won't repeat how you cook them. It was such an awful experience that I ran next door at one point, hysterical. The kids of course refused to eat them and I managed to get a few down; it was the garlic butter that made them palatable, so who needs the snails? But it is a source of almost free protein! Never again for us, though.

After a heavy rain shower on Crete I remember the islanders out in droves collecting bucketfulls - but never saw them on the menu in the tavernas.

I haven't ever done the cleaning and cooking process, only read about it, but I think I'm with you Jennifer on the "who needs the snails" as long as you've got the garlic butter LOL

i'll stick with it on bread thank you very much. i used to serve them when i waitressed. better dead than alive :)

LOL debi, they certainly are.
I love to hear the thrushes in my garden bashing them out of their shells (wicked *g*)

Yep, garlic bread, YUM

The way I like snails is in a creamy mushroom, garlic, and sherry sauce. The garlic butter on garlic toast is my second favorite way. I haven't found a single way that I like slugs--not that I've tried any!

That sounds a very good way of serving snails!

Don't know anyone who'd try slugs (apart from the odd toad of course:)

Philomel, trust me when I tell you that it is. I had escargot fixed this way in the Keys at two different restaurants--the Barracuda Grill and at Leeann's Steakhouse (I don't think that second one is quite right, but it's close). The snails were tender like mushrooms--no grit whatsoever. YUMMY!

:-)

I am beginning to think I am really crazy!! My neighbor keeps complaning of slugs & snails (little ones) and I keep telling her I don't have any. Now girls listen to this one!! MY zinnas are all but stems with flowers on top.They are about 4 1/2 ft tall but all the bottom leaves are almost gone. I keep blamming it on those darling little gold finches. I told my husband (because I do see them chewing on the leaves) that its ok because maybe they are needing the green or using the leaves for their nests. Now I go outside this morning and I see these shinny "roads" on my outdoor carpet on the back steps that are in the garden!! Am I that dumb that all this time the loss of leaves on the zinnas are these stupid slugs & snails??? Here all this time I thought I was pretty knowledgeable! Now I think I had better go back to Gardening Basics. Boy a person never ever gets enough "learning" about gardening.

Hi, LittleShima. Yes, it sounds like you've got slugs and/or snails! It's best to catch the problem early. Choose a method of eradicating them, and kill each one you see. In the fall, check for slug eggs. The are opalescent round seeds, about as big as a beebee.

What's a beebee?
(from ignorant UK dweller lol)

Philomel a small round pellet. Most commonly used in shotgun shells and made from lead,steel,titainum or coated with some wonder product to give it more impact.

The use of lead has been banned in several states Since lead shot has been proven to kill and make sick thousands of birds mostly ducks and the like.

Also used as a sinker [called split shot] on fishing line. Regards Ernie

Pic of BB's
http://www.pyramydair.com/cgi-bin/pellet.pl?pellet_id=80

Ya know this talk of BB's makes me wonder....Since Copper is good for getting rid of slugs and snails..wonder if sprinkling BB's around the plants would stop them?

Mollybee would you really want to lace your soil with heavy metal that would stay there forever?

If you want to try the copper program which I know stops them from getting on hardening off tables you may try soft copper tube or heavy electrical grounding wire. Both of these are pretty cheap and can probably found in your local scrap yard. At least you can retrieve these without having to use a screen at the end of the season.

Both of these are easy to work with and of the two I think I would choose the tube as it will have a higher wall to crawl over.This would provide more time and area for the slug to sense the burn.

I like the buried pie pan filled with beer method. Sluggs love beer crawl in and drown.

Ernie

Thanks eweed, I'm familiar with shot, for shootin' 'n' fishin' lol, so now get the picture
And thanks for the link MOLLYBEE
:)