I’ve Got Slugs in My Beer!

I recently wrote about my serious aphid problem. Well, unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on how you look at it) that is not the only pest problem I have this year. Slugs have been a recurring pain in the neck each growing season, and this year is certainly no different.

One of the disadvantages of using a mulch like straw to keep moisture in and weeds down, is that you also end up creating more potential slug habitat.

In past years I have simply tolerated the crop grazing, primarily due to the fact that they didn’t really seem to have a major impact on my ‘important’ crop plants, such as the tomatoes and zucchinis. This year however, with all my garden expansions and a renewed desire to nurture the best garden possible, I definitely want to see if I can mitigate the slug problem.

I’ve heard that slugs love beer. Luckily, I don’t mind having the odd wobbly pop myself, so I decided to test out the ‘beer trap’ method of slug removal – making sure that all remaining slugicide did not go to waste.

My strawberry patch seems to be slug central this year, so I thought this was as good a place as any to do my testing. My ‘traps’ consisted of three shallow containers with some beer in them. Pretty straight-forward stuff.

So far so good. When I checked on the traps the morning after setting them up, each of them had at least a couple slugs in them, along with an assortment of other invertebrate party animals – ants, flies, beetles etc. Interestingly, I left the traps for an additional day, but didn’t seem to trap any more slugs. Hmmm…these beer traps could get expensive (and fun at the same time – haha).

All joking aside, I think I’ll be trying out some other methods. If anyone knows of any good techniques for getting rid of slugs (in an eco-friendly manner) please let me know. One possibility that I’ve considered is diatomaceous earth, but I’m a little worried about hurting ‘good guy’ critters like lady bugs etc.

Anyway, I’ll keep you posted!

Technorati Tags: slugs, slug traps, pests, garden pests, diatomaceous earth

Written by Compost Guy on June 25th, 2009 with 5 comments.
Read more articles on Gardening.