Kick Every Snail And All The Slugs Out Of Your Garden!The garden snail and slugs of every description are garden pests that I do not enjoy co-existing with in the garden. There is just no way to get around their cold sliminess, and they like to prowl or slime around at night, which keeps me awake. A snail or slug is not an insect, but rather is a mollusk, so they are more closely related to clams and mussels. These garden mollusks can do a wide range of damage to plants, including eating the young shoots of plants as they sprout, eating leaves (thus leaving big holes in the leaves) and leaving slime trails in their wake, which do not so much damage plants as leave them looking ugly. (Though, you would not want to eat a lot of lettuce leaves with slug slime on them.) Where Garden Slugs LiveThe difference between a snail and a slug is the shell. Slugs are basically snails without shells. They all eat using their “horny rasp” to saw away at the food they want to eat, which is why a beautiful row of newly planted annuals can look like a tiny army of loggers came through overnight after an attack. Young, tender parts are most susceptible to mollusk damage. Once a stem is thicker it is less susceptible to damage.During the day, garden snails and slugs hang out under damp boards, piles of leaves, under stairways—any place that is damp and dark. During the night, they hit the garden and wreak havoc. As a proactive gardener, you can put a stop to their munching before it is out of control and you have no plants left. How To Outsmart A Garden SnailThese are my well-honed techniques for getting rid of a slimy mollusks.Beer: These garden mollusks love beer more than any other garden-destroying critter. There are some ways to deploy the beer for “snailicidal” success. Beer traps work like any other scent-related trap. They attract the target creature to the trap, and then hold the target creature in the trap. You have to set up the trap correctly or you will attract a lot of slugs, but won’t kill any of them. At that point, you have yourself a little slug farm, and happy slugs with lots of food. In order for your beer traps to work, you need to sink a glass jar in the area you want to attract slugs. Fill the jar with beer to about one inch from the top. The idea is that the slugs will be attracted to the beer, will fall in and drown. The drowning part is important to keep yourself from farming slugs. Do not use a shallow plate of beer on top of the soil, and do not use a container with outward sloping sides (or the slugs will not be able to crawl into the container). The real problem with the beer trap is that you will also attract every garden gnome in the neighborhood. So let me offer a couple of other solutions, so we can maintain our sobriety. Stealth: Sneaking out into the garden with a flashlight at bedtime and hand picking these guys off your plants is a very effective way to rid yourself of them. Wait until a couple of hours after dark to let them come out of hiding. Remember, they are not fast. After two or three nights of this, most of these slime merchants will be gone from your garden. Diatomaceous Earth: There is a young wives tale (well, they might be old in people-years, but in gnome years, they are young) that crushed egg shells will keep garden mollusks away from your plants. One of my favorite garden book authors, Jeff Gillman, tested that notion, and came up with the results that diatomaceous earth actually works much better and that eggshells do nothing at all. Diatomaceous earth is made of fossilized diatoms, which have very sharp edges and essentially cut up the bottom of the slug or snail. You need to use diatomaceous earth when it is not raining outside, or it will cement together and become ineffective. These are a few of my best remedies for ridding your garden of snails and slugs. Give them a try! I’m certain you will be happy with the results! Happy gardening, Geefrank
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