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sandpapertongue

Slugs love dill!

Sandpaper Tongue
10 years ago

This is my first year planting dill, and I have never in my life seen so many slugs! I found a huge one on the ground, and my dill plant is covered in tiny ones.

I've been flicking them off my plant and smushing them. A part of me feels bad though -- they don't appear to be eating the plant to nothingness (I grow the dill mainly for butterflies & their caterpillars). But they gross me out, I have to say, and I would rather they not be in my garden.

Copper, coffee grounds, diatomaceous earth -- do these really work? Or should I just keep picking them off?

Or do slugs serve a good purpose somehow and should be spared?

Comments (14)

  • batyabeth
    10 years ago

    They are bird food, lizard food, frog food. Other than that, kill 'em all I say, flick them off your plant, etc. Nothing much works against them, I've found. Slugs and snails ruin much of my garden every year. I hand pick them off at least twice a day in our wet season.

    If it's between them or my plants, the plants win.

  • margowicz
    10 years ago

    check the vid

    Here is a link that might be useful: trap

  • seysonn
    10 years ago

    Has anybody tried used coffee grounds ?

  • Persimmons
    10 years ago

    I've heard a drink of beer from the bottle top is enough alcohol to kill them and they enjoy drinking it.

  • nickl
    10 years ago

    You can reduce the slug problem by encouraging predators such as amphibians, mammals, and birds, and by maintaining a moderate mulch to promote insect predators. However, a NEW mulch will actually encourage slugs at first. But you have to start sometime.

    Iron phosphate (sold as Slug-go, Slug Magic, and other brands). is very effective and safe on herbs and other edibles.. However, it isn't cheap and it must be reapplied after every heavy rain..

  • wally_1936
    10 years ago

    I tried beer but that did not seem to work. I was reading the Epsom Salts works, has anyone tried this, if so does it work?

  • seysonn
    10 years ago

    Beer is too expensive to serve slugs. Hehe. I pick them and use Get -Buga(Ortho) . after two years of continuous systematic efforts, there are very few of them around. They are mostly damaging when the seedling are small. But when squash and things like that are grown, a slug now and then is not going to case major damage. Today I mange to hunt 4 of them in all vegetable, flowers and shrubs gardens.

  • Sandpaper Tongue
    Original Author
    10 years ago

    Hi all! Nice to see I have company in my slug-infestation. Actually, I'm pretty lucky. I've been picking them off in the early morning, but I haven't hit double digits yet. And they are usually little baby slugs --- though I did run across a 3-incher the other day and almost died of grossness.

    Today, I saw two little frogs in my garden! 1 little brown thing, probably some type of toad? Tiny little thing, maybe the size of a quarter. Here's hoping he's a good little predator with a taste for slugs! And then I saw a little black frog. I'm not sure if they are living here or just passing through. I don't have a pond or any permanent water feature.

  • fatamorgana2121
    10 years ago

    I've used the beer slug traps with great success. The traps are gross the empty but it is simple and easy to do with no dangerous chemicals to handle.

    FataMorgana

  • Sandpaper Tongue
    Original Author
    10 years ago

    Yeah..that toad is not eating nearly enough slugs to earn his keep.

  • nickl
    10 years ago

    Hi FataMorgana:

    Iron phosphate is NOT a dangerous chemical. Iron phosphate (also known as ferric phosphate) is Generally Recognized As Safe (GRAS) by the Food & Drug Administration (FDA). The slug baits that use this are OMRI listed for organic food production.

    Both iron and phosphorus are part of the normal diet and are found in many foods'. I don't suggest eating this stuff, but if you or one of your pets happened to ingest a small amount by accident it wouldn't cause any problems.

    You should treat any pesticide with respect. But all-in-all, this stuff is probably safer than what you use to wash your dishes..

  • TreeCurits
    10 years ago

    I can sympathize... Nothing in my garden has been more detrimental than slugs. I've tried the beer trick in the past, and while it did drown many slugs, I felt it attracted even more. Those buggers cleared my pepper plants to the base. Personally, I won't be doing that in the future. I found that keeping my plants drys as possible was a pretty good deterrent. Of course that has been almost impossible for me this season.

  • Colm Barrett
    last year

    Look up slug nematodes can make them yourself.nyourself.need to follow guidelines carefully but at a predator to the ground in the form of