Saturday, November 19, 2011

I saw some slugs on my marigolds last night. The marigolds are around my veggies. What to do?

Should I be concerned that they were on my marigolds, which outline my veggie garden, so should I not worry about it too much. I am trying to be as organic as possible, so I dont want a ton of chemicals all over everything.

I saw some slugs on my marigolds last night. The marigolds are around my veggies. What to do?
A couple of things you can do. the easiest and least gross is buy diatomacious earth (not the swimming pool kind) and run a 2" band of it around your garden beds or individual plants. the DE is made of diatoms which are basically like sharp pieces of glass to the slugs and they will not cross the barrier. this needs to be inspected and replaced as needed.





Hand pick the slugs and place them into a container of either salt or wood ash. the salt/wood ash melts the buggers. Do this either early in the morning or evening when the slugs are active. A week of hand picking will dramatically reduce your slug population.





You can place a board by your garden and the slugs will crawl under it during the day. Flip it over and remove the slugs and toss them into the salt/wood ash container. I would suggest sprinkling salt directly on them but since the board will be in your garden there is a big risk of the salt getting into the soil and making the soil pretty sterile and unable to grow much.





I have never had much luck with beer traps and you have to replenish them after any rain as the rain dilutes the beer and becomes unattractive to the slugs.
Reply:Find a shallow dish or old mason jar lid and fill it with beer. the slugs will go to the lid and not your plants. They will either die or you can collect them and move them somewhere else less harmful to your garden.
Reply:Slugs ate my pumpkins last year. Use a pie pan w/ beer set it in small hole so they can wiggle in the pan. Or go out %26amp; buy slug bait. Will keep them away. I'm using the bait this year :) GL!


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