Most of the seedlings I have planted out this year have been eaten by slugs within a day.
I have my final two runner bean plants that need to go out.
How can I prevent these from being the next feast for the slugs? I don't want to use chemicals so it has to be organic. I am fine with killing them (they have driven me to it!)
Save the beer and make your own traps is my suggestion. It works just as well and is a lot cheaper.
Mix the following and let it sit in a warm place, stirring occasionally until you get a yeasty smell.
1 cup of water
1 teaspoon of sugar
1 teaspoon of flour
1/2 teaspoon of dry yeast
Place it in marjarine containers, pop bottles etc, every 15 feet or so in your garden. It's worked quite well for me. Good luck
Slugs don't like crawling (sliming? oozing?) over copper. I've seen ribbons of copper and other types of copper bariers sold in gardening stores, but I usually just go to my local hardware store and buy a few feet of thin, non insulated copper wire (8 gauge wire, I think, is what I usually bought). I then bend them into loops and place the loops around the veggies I want to protect. This has worked pretty well for me, and is has definitely been a good way to protect small, young plants from slugs.
Beer traps are also very effective, and I usually use a few of those too, but they tend to catch lots of other crawling bugs. Also, one of the most disgusting gardening tasks I've ever done was empty out a trap full of week old beer and dead slugs. Of course, I did dump it into my compost bin.
One other thing I've read about beer traps is that the non-alcoholic beer is better for baiting than the real stuff. I've never been able to tell that much of a difference, but I can usually find the non-alcoholic stuff on special.
Here's an idea that makes a lot of short term work but has paid off for me in the long run.
Add a water feature with some shallow (1" to 2" deep) areas. You will attract birds, frogs and toads who will assist in keeping the slug population low. This does not eliminate all slugs, just some of them. And, it takes time for the word to get out that your garden is a good place to live.
I have been using "Slug Stop" non-toxic granules for some years now, and they do the job - and withstand heavy rain! They are extremely absorbent and work by extracting moisture from slugs and snails as these contact them. They aren't cheap, but they are the only organic deterrent I have found - and there aren't many I haven't tried! - that gives effective protection against slugs. I don't know if they are available in the US...
Hand picking them at night is a great way to get a large population under control. After you have reduced their numbers you could try a few things.
If you have mulch around your plants you may want to move it back away from the plant stems. Mulch is a great hiding place for slugs.
They do not like to go over any rough material so spreading some Diatomaceous earth or wood ashes around the plants will help. Be careful with too many wood ashes as they will affect the pH of your soil. Both of these materials will need to be refreshed fairly often, especially after a lot of rain.
Good Luck!
Slugs are great workers in a compost pile.
Leave a hearty amount of vegetable left-overs (eg: potato and orange peels) outside during the night and come back early in the morning. It'll be full of snails that you can either get rid of, or throw into the compost bin.
You can then proceed to add a wall of egg shells to make sure they stay in the compost bin.
Not sure where you are in the world (therefore not sure if they're available where you are), but have you looked into using nematodes?
Oz
I have tried some of the non-toxic / organic spread and granules from Lowes and Home Depot. Nothing has matched the success of the beer buried in a cup in the ground. In my region of the northeast this is probably the only method I would suggest and is easily available.
I've tried everything in the above answers. I detest killing. BUT, the only way I was able to make a difference in my garden was to get a flashlight and go out at night while slugs were out of their hiding spots and cut them in half. Hundreds every night for 3 or 4 nights and then it drastically began to reduce. I'd go out every other night, every third or fourth night. I left the poor things with their guts all over my lawn. Someone said that they didn't like being near their dead relatives. I think that is bunk. But my goodness if I didn't have to worry about slugs in a few weeks of this grisly task. It is quick and humane...enough. I also would recommend getting rid of big chunks of wood, rocks around the edges of your planting beds and tall weeds. These are their homes.
I once had two muscovi ducks that gobbled up slugs and snails. Sigh. Then they shat them out on my back doorstep and that was worse...grin, good luck!
For your garden you need to install sheets of plexiglass or metal roofing around the perimeter, a foot high. A foot deep to secure. Beer traps, slug bait none of those work at all. Diatomaceous earth sort of works but the best way I have found is to go out at night with a flash light and scissors and chop chop slugs languishing on the lawn. They love to go out on the lawn at night, I don't know why but they do. Chop chop. Do for 3 or 4 nights. Doesn't have to be in succession. You'll see great results. The best you can hope for.
A slick barrier is the next best.
This is if you have already removed the condos with neon signs saying 'HOMES FOR SLUGS next to easy food'...No rocks, discarded lumber, lumber pieces for dividing, plastic is the worst possible solution. Beer is like neon signage, not a great idea and certainly ineffective.
Slug bait is dangerous for cats and dogs and I have never seen any interest in slug bait by slugs. Remember the word 'bait' means to attract. Similar to those electric fly zappers. They attract flying insects up to 5 miles away just to find themselves zapped into a zillion pieces all over the picnic table with thousands of viruses. Nuts. You do not want to attract pests.
Nematodes I've not tried...beneficial nematodes. Possibly a great addition to chop chop nights. Let us know if you go that route.
You should try iron phosphate pellets. They disrupt snail and slug digestive system causing them to stop eating as soon as they ingest it.
Slugs love the yeast in beer. Bury a container in the ground where slugs can climb in. Fill it halfway with beer and the slugs will climb in and the alcohol will kill them. Another way to control slugs and snails in your garden is to spread ashes from the fireplace around the perimeter of the garden. This will deter the pesky critters. Salt spread around the perimeter will also do the job.. I hope that this helps!
Sluggo is highly effective, and it is now OMRI listed: Sluggo gets OMRI seal of approval - aka organic.
Here in coastal Maine the nonnative, invasive slugs and recently, snails, are serious pests in my garden. I've tried numerous approaches to control them, and beer did not kill them. I was disconcerted to find that the birds were eating the slug repellent pellets and had to find something else. The tiny slugs are just as destructive as the larger ones. Now I start in May and continue until hard frost.
I go out in the evening or very early morning or during rain and spray them with a solution of water and household ammonia, without added fragrance, about 4:1.
This is very strong, so wear gloves and label the spray bottle. Target the slugs and snails and don't spray otherwise. Avoid spraying it on certain plants such as those in the tomato family, but otherwise the garden vegetables, bedding plants and perennials seem to thrive with the foliar nitrogen they get in this treatment. It's not certified organic but it saves the repugnant task of dealing with dead slugs in traps. It does not work on cutworms.
If the plants are important to me, e.g., small kale seedlings, I erect fences of window screen scraps about 6 inches tall. I also encourage toads, salamanders, and garter snakes, which eat slugs, by keeping boards in the garden paths. Occasionally I turn these over and spray the slugs that hide under them. On the up side, being out in the garden at night or in the rain is just lovely, even if I am on slug patrol.
Hand picking worked very well for me. I collect them with (old-recycled) plumbing pliers and put them into a bucket with water at the bottom, and moving the water within the bucket detaches the slugs that try to escape. I unload the slug bucket on my composting pile, remotely from the garden, where they are put at work for my sake.
Remove any hiding places for the beasts within 5 yards of your garden, like branches piles, unattended bushes, mulch piles...
Gathering all the slugs in one places attracts their predators here. My composting pile is a very good place for this because it is under tree shades near a small stream. The slug diseases are also prone to develop widely in a slug-crowded place.
I live in a very sluggy area. I've used beer traps, egg shells, diatomaceous earth etc. But nothing has ever even come close to the success that I've had with iron phosphate aka sluggo. It is OMRI listed meaning it is approved for organic gardening. It's just so much more convenient than using traps and seems to work way better for me. Plus, beer traps actually get very expensive! I drink most of my beer!! Though I must say I am enticed by the recipe provided by Travis above. I am a pretty strict organic grower and I never like to use products that kill anything, but slugs have been such a persistent and devastating problem here that I feel 100% ok using iron phosphate. Sometimes purism costs way more than it returns...
Keep a light on. Slugs hate light. place it close to the plants being attacked.
Over the past few years I have tried most of the typical approaches mentioned in some of the previous answers, usually only with some sort of success, but never for 100%.
However, near the end of last year, and during the entire winter period, I have allowed our chickens (they are only 3) to walk around anywhere in my vegetables garden. I was told that by doing so, the chickens will search, and find / eat, all the slugs "eggs" (not sure how they are called in English). That way, around spring time, these "eggs" cannot become real slugs.
And believe it or not, but this year I cannot remember I saw even 1 slug ... even though I have not done anything myself to fight them. So get some chickens to do the work during winter time to take care of the slugs ... And as a bonus you'll enjoy the eggs you get from your chickens.
Attention: make sure to keep the chickens out of your garden during spring / summer, to avoid your garden will look like a battle field (because the chickens had a great time digesting it all).
Plan B: as an alternative to chickens, you should try to make your garden attractive to frogs. Because they also seem to "like" slugs (i.e go after them). And BTW, chickens and frogs are compatible (you could combine both approaches).
