I've always had plenty of slugs and snailsaround my house but this wet weather has brought them out in droves. Across the concrete walkway in front of my house they leave kinda shiny tracks where there slime has dried in the mornings and you can even see their track glistening on the wet grass. The other night I moved a big piece of wood and underneath was this big slug. It fell to the ground and I picked the slippery thing up and tossed it out of the garden. Yuck!

On another group someone recommended putting a little circle of sand around your plants and another recommended sprinkling sand all over your garden. They said the slugs and snails don't like the gritty sand and would not hang around sandy areas or cross over it. Sounds logical and I may round up a couple of slugs and put a ring of sand around them and see if they escape or not. Only question I have is what happens when the sand gets real wet? Will they cross it then. With this kind of rain the sand would get washed away or into the soil it seems to me. Anyway I'm going to try the sand trap later today. I'll let you know tomorrow what happens.

Good luck,
Hank

Sluggo.

It's the only thing I have found that is truly effective.

The active ingredient, which comprises 1% of the product, is iron phosphate, and any of the product which is not ingested by the snails and slugs breaks down into iron in your soil. It is safe to use around pets and wildlife.

When the snails and slugs ingest the Sluggo they cease feeding on your plants immediately, but the product takes 4 or 5 days to actually kill them. Generally they crawl off and die somewhere....you won't actually notice a lot of snail and slug carcasses....you'll just notice they are gone.

It is an organic product. It can be used up to the day of harvest and even on the day of harvest. You can use it on your lawn, in vegetable and herb gardens, fruit orchards, greenhouses and ornamental beds. It kills all kinds of snails and slugs, including Banana Slugs, field slugs, smooth slugs, common gray garden slugs, spotted garden slugs, red slugs, black slugs, slender slugs, and all kinds of snails.

I used to have to mail order it because no one around me carried it. Nowadays I purchase it at the Lowe's in Sherman, Texas, although I have not yet found it in a store in Oklahoma.

In my garden it also appears to kill pill bugs and sow bugs, which I have by the millions. It is not labeled for pill bugs and sow bugs, but it kills them.

I think there is now a similar (maybe identical) product on the market called Escar-go, but I've never seen it in stores, only on the web or in garden catalogs.

For the record, I would never, ever, ever use the commercial non-organic slug and snail killers in my garden because they contain metaldahyde.

Dawn

I have lots and lots of pillbugs too. I figure they like the compost and the shade offered by the plants. I always heard they didn't hurt or harm gardens. They're kind of "neutral." Is that true?

Well, I'd read about products with iron phosphate. There's another type called "Escarg-GO!" which I will use because I love products that have clever names.

Jeff,

I have always thought of pillbugs as neutral, but the truth is that they can be quite damaging. In my garden it is not unusual to see them strip plants bare right down to the ground, including tomato and bean plants, especially in the very early spring.

I try to combat the pillbugs by keeping mulch pulled back an inch or two from plant stems. And, if some of the pillbugs turn up dead after I spread the Sluggo, oh, well....

In general, though, I think pillbugs are supposed to be good for the garden because they help break down organic matter. And did you know they are related to crustaceans?

Dawn

Dawn,

Does Sluggo have any effect on toads? In the last two days I almost stepped on a pair of them engaged in you know what. They even jumped over two feet together. On the other side of the house I came across two little ones about the size of half dollars. I've gotten kind of fond of them over the years and wouldn't want to hurt them.

Hank,

I do not know for sure, but I believe it does not. In all the printed literature that I have seen, it always says Sluggo is safe around pets and wildlife. I hope that means all wildlife. I have lots of toads and frogs and I can't tell that it has ever made any dent in their population.

However, the Section labeled "Environmental Hazards" in the flyer that comes with Sluggo warns that the product is for terrestial use only and should not be applied directly to water, which makes me have a teeny twinge of worry....like, why....what does it do? Might it be harmful to aquatic life forms like amphibians???

If using it around the toads worries you, you might want to google Sluggo or Escar-go and e-mail the manufacturer your question about toads.

If you have toads, they should eat up the slugs and snails for you, unless there are more slugs and snails than a handful of toads can devour.

Dawn

Dawn:

Pillbugs aren't just related to crustaceans -- they are crustaceans. The subgroup malacostraca contains shrimp, crabs, lobsters and krill.

That just blew my mind when I learned that. They're basically crabs that have spent so much time around bugs that they have adopted their habits and lifestyles! Some pillbugs even have hourglass-shaped markings on their back to mimic poisonous spiders like the black widow.

Click down here to see the pillbug's deep-sea relative:

Here is a link that might be useful: Bathynomus giganteus

Jeff,

That's an ugly relative!

I know that one reason pillbugs are hard to control is that they are crustaceans so insecticides tend not to hurt them, or at least not enough to kill them. I've never had them in large enough numbers that they have damaged plants much, but these last two or three years it seems that all the pillbugs and sowbugs in southern Oklahoma have moved to our place to live in the mulch underneath the shade of the tomato plants.
I hope the Sluggo knocks down the population a little.

Speaking of crustaceans, when we first moved up here we had crawdads in the bar ditches, but after several years of drought, I haven't seen them in a long time.

Dawn

I stopped by the Home Depot Garden Center around 59th and N. May last night. Let me tell you, not much environmentally friendly stuff to be found there. Had an awful lot of deadly environmentally unfriendly stuff though.

I googled Lowes and they carry Sluggo but not in any of the central Oklahoma stores.

This morning I called Horn Feed and Seed on NW Expressway and Classen and they have Sluggo for $11.98 for the small one pound size. They also said they had other iron phosphate products but I didn't inquire about them. Called Satterlee Nursery at around 70th and N. May and their small Sluggo is $9.98. I'm gonna buy local, i.e. small family business, and Satterlee's is cheaper and much closer.

Gonna go slug hunting this evening.

My slug/snail population is way to big for just a family or two of toads though.

Hank

Hi Hank!

The Sluggo at Satterlee is about the same price that I usually pay for the one pound size.

I have noticed that both the Lowe's (Ardmore, Ok) and the Home Depot (Gainesville, TX) closest to us have been slow to stock organic products, although that is slowly changing.

Because my DH and DS both commute to the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex to work, I am down that way a lot and can find just about any organic product I want down there, and generally at a really competitive price. Here in southern Oklahoma, at long last, the stores are FINALLY beginning to carry some organic fertilizers and a few organic pesticide products, so I think it will eventually be possible to just walk into the store and get whatever organic product you want...one of these years.

I always make a point of telling the folks in stores how happy I am to see organic products so they will know that the demand for those products is out there.

Happy slug hunting. I hope Sluggo works as well for you as it has for me.

Dawn

I got my Sluggo! It's wierd how pesticides seem to all have a unique pesticide smell. I bought the Sluggo, went on to grocery shop and a few other places and all the time my car smelled like pesticide even though Sluggo is organic. I wonder if they all use some inert material that makes them all smell alike.

Sluggo is made in Germany. They are very big on organics, recycling, green building, solar and wind energy and all kinds of what I'd call progressive environmentally safe products.

It's a shame the US government only wants the US to be best at weapons, weapons technology and war. It used to be so different. Sorry for the depressive rant.

Hank,

I know what you mean about that pesticide smell. I agree that Germany is way ahead of the US in organics and all kinds of green technologies as well as in alternative medicines like homeopathy and other more natural therapies.

And you can rant any time you want to. One of the great things about this forum is that we can rant and rave and get our frustrations out of our system, and 98% of the time we will find a sympathetic ear here.

It isn't just the US government. Wall Street and the components of the entire financial system only look at the bottom line any more. And, since it is cheaper to build cars in Mexico or clothing in Thailand, that is what they do.

And did you know that a lot of the best new developments in plants and seeds are coming out of Belgium and other parts of Europe. I try to buy American-made products, but sometimes it is hard to find them. This year I am growing some watermelons developed in Poland and Japan and sold in the U.S. by Seeds of Italy, which carries Franchi-Simenti Seed. I guess it truly is a global economy.

Dawn

I'm really fascinated by arthropods. The development of the segmented body structure and the exoskeleton was one of the most important steps in evolutionary progress toward lifeforms we typically consider "animals". Before that, most lifeforms were jelly-like and formless, scooting around on pseudopods and sucker-feet. Not that I don't think octopi are cute.

Decollate snails eat the garden snails but not your plants. I had ten acres of garden snails eating my oranges. I put a bunch of decollates out a few years ago and now the garden snails are all gone.

I put sand paper around my hostas and I have never had a slug problem since.

Sandpaper is an interesting solution, but I can't imagine trying to keep it from blowing away here in our county. Do you use anything to weigh it down?

The only possible problem I see with sandpaper is that, while it keeps the snails and slugs off your hostas, it doesn't do anything to "remove" them from the area. And as long as they are in the area, they are eating something. I still prefer using Slug-Go and similar products (they all have iron phosphate as their active ingredient) to kill them or D.E. to keep them away from the plants. I don't have much of a slug problem, surprisingly, but that is probably because we have about 10 acres of woodland and I am guessing they are so happy there that they mostly stay away from the landscaped areas.

I see snails in my veggie garden every now and then, but not the kind that eat plants. The kind of snails I see are probably brown decollete snails and they eat insects.

I got Sluggo for my huge population of teeny-tiny slugs that were devouring my herb garden. And YAY! It worked!! Things are looking much better in my garden now, and it seemed to work right away. I am so happy with this product, and not worried about having it in my garden.

However, it did NOT work on my pillbugs! They devoured my cucumber seedlings (twice -- I finally gave up on cucumbers this year), and then just completely stripped my basil plants, which I've spent weeks nursing indoors to get large enough to finally plant outside.... GONE in 24 hours. GRRRRR, I am so mad!! How do you get rid of these damn things?? I bought some organic spray at Lowes, that said it would get rid of them, but did not seem to make the slightest difference. I am not resorting to chemicals though -- but does anyone know of an organic method that really works? Does diatoemaceous earth really work? (I would have gotten that, but Lowes was out of stock.)

I would love to have a solution to this if anyone knows of anything.
Thanks!

Rose,

Plain old Slug-Go has always taken care of my pillbugs and sow bugs, and we have literally thousands of them in/under the heavy mulch in late winter/early spring. When I plant seedlings, I put a little ring of a few granules of it around each seedling...it doesn't take much. This year I didn't lose a single vegetable seedling of any kind to pill bugs or sow bugs. However, I did lose about a dozen small marigold plants to the pill bugs during a rainy spell from the end of April to mid-May when it was raining daily and I did not keep reapplying the Slug-Go. I'll add that Slug-Go is supposed to remain effective even after rain, but my garden is on a fairly steep slope, so I think mine my wash away or at least leach out of the raised beds and wash dow into the paths, so I repply it often in rainy periods.

There is an improved version of Slug-Go called Slug-Go Plus that is labeled for use on pillbugs and sowbugs. It has the iron phosphate that's found in the original plus Spinosad, which is a naturally occurring bioinsecticide. I've used it, too, and it has kept the numbers of pill bugs and sow bugs manageable. They never completely go away, but I seldom see damage from any of them. In general, they are only a pest in my garden and landscape during the rainy spring season. We are very dry here....generally in drought.....most of the summer months and their population probably mostly abandons our garden and landscape for the cooler, more moist woodlands that sit to our house's west, north and south.

Pure food-grade diatomaceous earth is not easy to find in stores, and I think it is getting harder to find because some companies are now carrying a DE product that has a chemical insecticide added to it and some retailers carry that instead of the natural, organic version. I used to buy it in big tubs (the size of Tidy Cat buckets) when I lived in Texas, but can't find it here in OK. So, I mail order it from an online company. I order 5 or 10 lbs. at a time and it lasts forever.

I've linked below the company from which I have purchased DE in the past. I've been very happy with this company. They ship quickly and their customer service is great.

Dawn

Here is a link that might be useful: Garden Harvest Supply's DE Page