I have sluggs in my Staghorn Fern....oh ucck...they are are awful...I have pulled out several but I think there may be more.....they have slid there way under the protective base's..or ears (This is a pretty large plant) and have set up house keeping....what can I do about it....Thought of setting the whole plant in a barrel of insecticide so it would get them all...but kinda afraid to, don't know if it will kill the plant......there are also some snails and pill bugs in it too.....HELP....:o(
Help
Hi Willow
Not sure if the slugs here are like the ones in Oregon but we use to put a little saucer of beer by the base of the plant. The slugs loved it and would crawl into the dish and that was the last swig they would take.
It won't hurt the plant.
Gosh.... thats so simple, I checked the frige and there was one can of beer in it.....cheers to the slugs....I'm gonna put it out now and maybe stop any more from getting in .... :O)
It doesn't take much and you can have the rest.LOL
Let me know how it works
Jan
If the beer doesn't work, try the product Escar-Go from Gardens Alive!. It's little pellets of iron phosphate or something like that. You might be able to sprinkle it in your fern. The slugs and snails will eat the little pellets and it kills them. It works like a charm! Course, using a salt shaker on them works, too, but you have to put quite a lot of salt on them so they don't "slime" it off and crawl away. You wouldn't want to do this on slugs in your fern, though.
I just got off the phone with one of the nursursys I've been to that had alot of SF's and they told me....
That they do dunk them in an insecticide solution...Like Dursban,Diazinon etc ....cut the mesurments to a little over half strength because the slugs were very sensitive to it and that would be enough to kill them..snails and pillbugs too....They do this to all SF's about once every 4-6 weeks to keep them out.....
Let the whole plant set in this for about 15-20 minutes and that should be enough time for this to soak through..Check it in a few minutes as some of the slugs will start coming out and you can see about how many there were and how bad the problem was....
They do this because there is no other way to get to them....they burrow under the ears (she called them flaps) and sprays won't touch them and when they do come out most of the insecticide had dispersed enough it didn't do any good.....
The other option was to take the plant back down and replant/reboard removing them by hand......They said they had a severe problem with them before they started doing this and had lost some really large ones to bugs......at one time they had resorted to wraping the board with screen wire but they still got in....only the ones hanging on skinny little wires from the head poles were safe...slimey little critters to say the least......
..Well what have I got to lose if I don't do something the slugs will kill the plant.........Oh how grose...... :op