I’ve ordered an organic slug pellet product. National post services have been on strike for the so-manieth time while they can’t even do a proper job as it is, and meanwhile slugs are demolishing my plants despite many beer cups being around. After a week of waiting for my slug pellets, picking snails and replacing beer cups, I’ve fucking had it! Almost all my latest plants have been gobbled up with snail tracks all around them, sometimes leaving just a stem, sometimes just a top without a bottom, and a lot of times an at first sight seemingly healthy plant with an eaten bare stem that has almost no ability left for growth. My bigger plants stay spared luckily, but man do I hate these fuckers. I even spread coffee around the ones that were most affected but they managed to found ways around for some and others are having more trouble scrambling back than they have time for it since flowering is edging closer every day.
I’m off to the store to buy the product I ordered for more money cause postal services here suck more than a black hole. Though not as much as slugs. They definitely suck more. I wish slugs would instantly liquidize upon touching my plants. I should breed in that quality. Anyone have a plant that does that?
Feel free to post your outdoor pest rant below. I’m sure many of us have a few and venting can be cathartic.
Apparently (according to at least 1 source) Japanese beetles stay away from dead Japanese beetle bodies; so if you catch them and put their pretty green heads on a stake surrounding your plants, you should be good!
full soil
Like I said, off to the store to get the irontrifosfate pellets, safe for chickens and cats and kids, and they break down into iron and fosfates that are naturally present in soil. Good enough for me! I don’t think they kill snails though but they present a far less invasive problem.
Put sticky traps around your plants with salt all over them? Make like an electric fence barrier so when they touch it they say oh hell nah im good on that
Might as well use copper strips or wire if you’re going for something like that. Doesn’t rain out (rains frequently here) and they get shocked too.
None of those are easier than just getting those pellets though
And the pellets have some scent that slugs find irresistable while salt and copper are not a slug’s friend, and thus don’t kill in high numbers. The salt is bad for the soil and my soil isn’t the best as it is. I’ve tried copper before and it works until they find a bridge to your plants, then you’re fucked.
And I appreciate the thought, but I also kinda cringe when I see a slug get hit with salt. Supposedly it’s a pretty painful experience for the slug. Not to say the irontrifosfate is painless or anything, but they just eat it and then go back into the soil where they die, without posing threats for hedgehogs who like to eat snails (we have frequent hedgehog visitors here so not all slug poisons are good)
Ever try Garlic bulbs?
Pulverized in your blender.
I give my indoors a dose, letting a bag of garlic bulb pulp, hang in my watering tote.
I add a shot glass of spent cooking oil, more for bugs, and unseen critters, as I water my plants with it.
Once a cycle anyway.
IDK, just wondering.
I have a lot of bantams running around, I’ve had to help one that was choking on a slug once
Just spread around the slug pellets, and I noticed the slugs apparently have the same tastes as me, the strains I love most are the ones that got eaten the most
Oh man, I have been in an epic battle with slugs this year. We’ve been stuck in a never-ending rain pattern and everything is so damned wet the slug situation is insane. Most years I can put down some of the iron phosphate in the area around my planters once or twice in a grow season and basically be set… not this year.
I’ve been killing them with a trowel, going out on patrol several times a day.
YMMV but I read something online that said the beer traps actually attract more slugs. Local hippies swear by it but this year I’m sticking with my trowel.
