All of my seedlings were de-leafed when i went out to rid my Greenhouse of the Aphids this morning, well I thought it was the aphids nibbling on them the past few days and weeks.
I decided to house clean and repot all of them. Well I found snails, and lots of them in the soil, in the pots under the pots, every were!!
I salted them all and then repotted everything and put them on a table that i scattered salt on before i put the pots down, will this be okay? is salt bad for plants if a little got in the pots? Or if the roots grow out of the water drain holes will the salt on the table harm them? my babies have no leaves they are just little stems now!! the ones that i left on the ground i spread a thick line of salt all the way around them, do the snails come out of the ground? was this a waste of my time? The little beggers, I willbe out now with a flash light a night snail hunting!!
And another thing I was very mad when i opened a bag of cheap potting soil from walmart and there were snails already in it!! i just threw the whole bag away!!
:)) I have a very dumb question about my slug problem
Generally... salt is not good for plants. Up here where the roads are salted all winter long, it kills trees growing on the sides of the roads. Some plants are more salt tolerant then others... but I have no idea how brugs will handle it.
Ammonia sprayed on slugs will kill them. There's also some environmentally friendly pellets you can get for slug control that are safe for pets and birds.
Didn't I read somewhere that slugs don't like coffee grounds? I thought maybe someone suggested putting used grounds under hostas to keep slugs from eating the leaves. Also crushed eggshells, pine straw, and diatomaceous earth are supposed to deter slugs. And I think they sell copper (the metal) strips which I believe slugs won't cross.
Eileen
Eileen you did indeed read slugs don't like coffee grounds.....and plants won't mind a bit in their soil. The coffee grounds will raise the acidic leavel a bit but not to awful much.
I use coffee grounds, egg shells, and crushed oyster shell in all my beds and have very little slug and snail problem.
RikerBear
Marc
If you don't have pets, put down some snail powder and it will take care of the slugs, if your pots are on the ground, they climb up through the holes. Then you must put this snail bait also in the pots to drain it through the soil and kill both slugs/snails. I have to pour water through them before I let my dogs even get near the pots or fence them off until you have made the powder disappear. I don't like using these snail poisions, but sometimes you just have to do what you have to do. I also hand pick the snails, but I just cannot stomach picking up slugs..yuck.
I have seen what happened to a neighbors cat from drinking contaminated water I refuse to use any snail/slug bait.
The natural methods work well enough to keep me happy.
I never thought of them drinking the water. That is awful. We are on over two acres and have too many varmits to control the natural way, so, it does get tough on us here. Even the county extensions use poison for the overpopulation of those rat flying squirrles. Also, there are hundreds of acres behind us that are not populated (except for more squirrles, rabbits, gophers, rats, etc..).
Good luck with your slugs.. A
i put out beer like someone said and my dog drank it!! so i know what you mean about them getting into things i will try the natural methods first or see if i can find a enviromentally animal friendly kind of snail bait somewhere, needless to say one of the church ladies saw me, when i was getting the beer for my slugs LOl she sure did act strange to me for a while, i knew if i started in on oh this is for the slugs in my yard.... that it would just sound like an excuse so i just didn't say anything, It was very funny to me. I really do not drink but that doesn't matter.
Amanda, that sounds like me going to buy some rum for a cake recipe years ago. I knew nothing about buying and asked the man for Rum and he asked light or dark. I said I don't know. I need it for a cake recipe and he said "sure". LOL When I left, he said bring me a piece of that cake and laughed. So when I made it, I took him a piece of the cake. I never went back to try to buy anymore. LOL