You’ve seen them. You’ve probably sworn at them. Every gardener’s nemesis, beware the Great Gray Garden Slug – Limax maximus. ‘Slug’ is the common name for any apparently shell-less terrestrial gastropod mollusk.

Have you ever heard of the Society for the Protection and Care of Slugs?

NO!

When it comes to protecting your valuable vegetable garden, there is no messing around with these guys.

It’s all out war!

There are many commercial and homemade ways to trap and kill slugs, but to be effective, you can’t use just one of them. If you’re going to annihilate slugs, it’s better to use multiple tactics to keep your plants safe. Here are our favourite tips on how to get rid of garden slugs.

Slug Bait – a commercial product that comes in pellets.
You drop the pellets on top of the soil around the plant you want to protect. The slugs are attracted to the bait pellets, eat them, and then die.  Read the label to make sure the bait brand is safe for birds and pets.

Slug Traps – bought or home made
You’ve probably heard of putting a tray of beer out. The beer attracts them, they fall into the beer and drown. There are all kinds of things you can use, like margarine containers, bowls or tin foil trays. Yeast and water also works, if you don’t want to waste your precious beer on your slug hunting pursuits.

Slug Havens – home away from home
Another slug control tip is to create a cozy place for them to gather. Lure slugs to a specific area so that you can catch them, by laying down a flat rock or piece of wood. They love to crawl under things, so when they accumulate in one spot, it’s easier to bag them.

Slug Spray – ammonia and water – Mwah ha ha ha!
The most recent slug killing tip we discovered, is to use 7 parts water to 1 part ammonia in a spray bottle. When you spray the slugs, they die and disintegrate, almost immediately. It seems to be okay on most plants, but test an area in case certain plants are sensitive to the ammonia.

Slug Hunting – day and night
My gardener husband’s first order of the day is to do a systematic patrol of the yard, to save key plants that are currently under attack by slugs. Once it’s dark, he dons a headlamp and goes out hunting again, with the ammonia spray bottle. At the beginning of April, when it started warming up, he was sometimes dispatching hundreds a day. Now, nearing the end of April, he is only catching three or four, and sometimes none in a day.

It feels good to know that he’s been making a dint in the population, but we’re not kidding ourselves. There will be more, hundreds and thousands more. As the plants mature, the sluggos will come back in droves to feast on the sweet treats that we grow. It’s inevitable.

Keep At It

I also suggest keeping a couple of small pails of salt water around your property. Drop the slugs in, and they die. Just plain water won’t drown them. You have to have salt.

Be assured that you will likely never be slug free, so accept that. Fill your arsenal with every tactic you have time to implement, and keep at it. Your vegetables will thank you for it.

Feel free to share any of your own slug control tips in the comments below.

See also War and Peace in the Garden.

Go forth and conquer, Slug Warrior.

Bonnie Chomica
Content Marketing Specialist
Marketing Communications for Small Business
Nanoose, Bay, BC
250-667-7647
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