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Gardening: Add some punch, panache to your war against invasive slugs

Slugs are the bane of many gardeners especially if you grow hostas. This little book by Sarah Ford, gives a humorous way to create barriers, enlist other critters to eat them and to outright kill them if nothing else works. (Pat Munts/For The Spokesman-Review)
By Pat Munts For The Spokesman-Review
Slugs are the bane of many gardeners especially if you grow hostas. This little book by Sarah Ford, gives a humorous way to create barriers, enlist other critters to eat them and to outright kill them if nothing else works. (Pat Munts/For The Spokesman-Review)

They are out there somewhere. Slugs. The bane of early spring gardeners, they will appear as soon as there are tender leaves to munch on.

Now is the time to plan your strategy for the spring for getting rid of them. For suggestions on controlling them, I am going to take a bit of a humorous route through the book “50 Ways to Kill a Slug” by Sarah Ford (Hamlyn, 2003).

Ford introduces her book with a little slug biology. It pays to know your enemy before your start your campaign. Slugs don’t necessarily need another slug to mate, they possess both male and female organs and can produce around 30 to 40 eggs several times a year. It takes about six months for a slug to reach maturity and then they can live up to five years. A slug can eat about 1½ pounds of vegetation a year. Do the math on this, it’s impressive.

First, she suggests making sure your garden isn’t too welcoming a place for the slugs to hang out it. If slugs have been a problem in certain areas of your garden, clean out all the dead leaves and other organic matter to bare soil to expose the slugs to predators.

Birds and chickens will forage for slugs during the day and at night, skunks and raccoons will snuffle their way through looking for a snack.

Scout your garden regularly. If you see the telltale slime trail, hoe it up. Slugs like following slime trails made by other slugs because it’s easier for them to move along them. Cultivate the soil lightly to expose slug eggs to predators and the drying wind.

Ford then goes into ways to create barriers that slow the critters down or stop them in their trails. Plant mint, chives, garlic, geraniums, foxgloves and fennel around areas that are hit hard by slugs. They don’t like the strong smell of these plants and will avoid them. This would be a particularly good strategy for the vegetable garden.

Scatter diatomaceous earth around the garden. Diatomaceous earth is made up of sharp but tiny shells of ancient sea life. The slugs find it uncomfortable to crawl over them. Lay down crushed nut shells, oyster shell, gravel or pine needles to make crawling uncomfortable. You can get oyster shell at the feed store, and we all have piles of pine needles. Lastly, clean up your woodworking shop and scatter the sawdust through the plants.

If you need to leave a stronger reminder that you don’t welcome slugs to the garden, invest in some copper foil and lay it around your favorite plants. As the slugs cross the foil, their slime creates an electrical charge that they don’t like. Slugs love the smell of beer and will migrate to tuna or cat food cans full of it set at ground level around the garden.

Lastly, if all else fails, iron phosphate granules sold as Sluggo are a sure way of controlling the pests.

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Pat Munts can be reached at pat@inlandnwgardening.com