Fighting slugs in our container veggie gardens

Last year I had no produce from my gardening efforts. Why? Because mostly the slugs, native to our Pacific Northwest, ate, usually in one overnight, anything tender that tried to grow. This year I was determined not to grow my vegetable garden for the slugs to eat.

This year, though, the weather decided to not to be spring when it was spring, to be only sort of summer with a periodic warm day, and here it is August and I can pretty much say there wasn't much of a spring and summer this year where I live. So growing the vegetables was not going to be easy with neither the weather cooperating nor the voracious eaters - those slugs!

Determined to persevere against the odds, I so thoroughly reasearched slugs, that I felt ready to take aim and do serious battle with the critters. And even with the delayed to non-existent spring weather, I was equally determined to grow a veggie garden this year.

For the slugs; used several methods - bait traps, beer traps, copper pennies laid out along the top edge of the container boards, going out at dusk and spearing them. My knight contemplated the problem and came up with a unique solution. He built the container beds and then he nailed the 'slug gutters' to the outside of the container boards. I could fill the slug gutters with salt and any slugs daring to cross would not make it to the vegetables. That seemed to work quite well. I still set the beer traps - just in case. Result - we have growing vegetables which haven't been eaten by the slugs. I think my knight has been very knightly about saving me and my vegetables from the slug eaters!

My wee garden, fighting the slugs and snails

I haven't tried this yet - hmmm, we'll see. Pacific Northwest and slugs are native, I think, so it has become a losing battle for me. My gardening started with no slugs or none that I could see the first couple of years. And in the last three years they have become 'progressive' slugs. So does that mean they are democratic slugs? I don't know, but I do know they can consume in one night more than I can nurture and grow all season. I don't like to kill them, but dang, I am not growing my kitchen produce garden to feed the slugs.



Another good riddance to slugs remedy;

I was told -- and it worked like a charm -- to save my egg shells, dry them out (I throw them in my dehydrator, of if in a bigger hurry, my oven for a few minutes), and run through the food processor. Then scatter them on the yard or garden. The snails and slugs eat them and die as it acts like eating glass on them.

During the 11 years I lived in that home, I did it like clock work
every month and we never had problem again.


Oh, and here's a different take on the egg shell remedy;

Keep your egg shells and fragment them. Don't crush them too fine; each
piece of shell should be about the size of a coin, no smaller than a dime.
Scatter the shells around your vegetable plants. Snails and slugs will
scratch themselves on the shells and die.

(I already do this and my slugs - you know the progressive ones - must be egg shell resistant!)


And my neighbor insists on the beer remedy;

Place containers of beer around perimeter of garden and/or plants. Slugs will be drawn to the beer, fall in and drown.


A complete list of supposedly 'proven' methods to control (or get rid of) slugs

No, I'm not going to put the whole list here - how about a link to Garden Advice though, and go read for yourself.