Eliminating slugs

Well, I've heard the stories about slugs and beer so decided to try it last night. I discovered yesterday morning that slugs were the culprits attacking my plants. I put cups of beer in a few places (buried the cups up to the top so the slugs could get in easily) and put cardboard over a few places, mainly to cover the beer because it started raining and I didn't want beer to overflow into my garden. This morning I went out and there were slugs clinging to the bottom of the cardboard and slugs in the bottom of the beer cups. Yea! I put more cardboard out today and will keep it out there (along with the beer) until I'm satisfied all the slugs are gone before re-planting.

Oh - there were also a couple of small pieces of wood in a couple of places that had slugs on this morning too. I just dropped all the slugs from the cardboard and wood into the beer to drown along with the others - and any I found still on the dirt (a few heading for the beer) I picked up with a twig and dropped them in the beer too.

I hope this helps someone.

Bec

I found some on my lettuces when I was harvesting this weekend. I'm going to try this.

I read a while ago that copper is a deterrent to slugs because their slime reacts to the copper to create a sort of battery, and it shocks them. But copper tape is really expensive, and copper wire is so hard to handle. Then I read in a magazine that, duh, pennies are made of copper and are much cheaper than any other option!

Last night, it was drizzling, and I knew the slugs would be out. So I took a flashlight and a handful of pennies and decided to experiment. I set a slug on a penny, and it didn't move very much. It actually looked kind of confused. Then I set a penny in front of a slug, and sure enough, in veered way off in the other direction to get away from the penny.

So before I went to bed, I placed pennies all around the border of my boxes. This morning I woke up and went out to check my plants, and there isn't a single slug in the garden! There were about half a dozen in them last night before I put the pennies on. It cost me about $8 to surround two 4x4 boxes and one 2x4 box. The pennies are heavy, so they stay on the rim of the boxes with no problem, but I plan on figuring out how to make them stay there permanently.

I was discussing this with my husband just this weekend. My question was do the slugs drown or die of alcohol poisoning - lol - I think perhaps i will try beer and pennies - my son will think he has hit the jackpot when he finds the box lined with pennies fortunately, only one of my boxes has a slug problem - perhaps it is because it is shader than the rest I am not sure