TWENTY-FIVE slugs in one night!!!

I've got quite good at the slug hunting in recent weeks, but Sunday night took the prize.  It was raining ever-so-lightly and on my patio with four lettuce troughs I found twenty-five of the nasty little beasties!!

They were everywhere: on the patio, on the wall of the house, on and in and under the troughs and saucers, and even some actually on the lettuces.  I began to feel as if I was in a zombie movie!!  The more I looked, the more I found.

It was clear that those I'd caught were simply the tip of the iceberg.  I did not sleep very well that night!  And yesterday I bought some slug bait.  I don't have a problem with a slug hunt every few days, catching up to half a dozen of them.  But this was plainly ridiculous.  I figure there's now a goodly population living on the underside of my patio floor planks.

Hopefully the Kiwi version of Sluggo will prove to be adequate.  The Iron EDTA is about half the concentration of Sluggo, so I wonder, but importing Sluggo is just not cost effective.

My lettuces, mercifully, looked about the same this morning as yesterday evening

I hope you can get control of the slugs, they can do a lot of damage to a garden.

That’s mildly disgusting to be honest!  I hate slugs!

Love the sign, OG!  Good to have a giggle from that experience

And yeah Scorpio, it was pretty disgusting, totally with you there.  I was doing a test to see how freezing works at killing them, so I had them in a plastic container and kept having to push them back down the sides!!  (I kept the lid on whenever I wasn't about to put another one in)

Getting the container clean was quite a mission!

KiwiSFGnewbie wrote: I was doing a test to see how freezing works at killing them, so I had them in a plastic container and kept having to push them back down the sides!!  (I kept the lid on whenever I wasn't about to put another one in)

I understand that if you leave them in the freezer for 3 hours it will kill them. Never tried it, though

Fill a container such as a coffee can with several inches of water and then add several drops of dish detergent. Drop the slugs and snails into the water and it should quickly neutralize them.

OhioGardener wrote:

KiwiSFGnewbie wrote: I was doing a test to see how freezing works at killing them, so I had them in a plastic container and kept having to push them back down the sides!!  (I kept the lid on whenever I wasn't about to put another one in)

I understand that if you leave them in the freezer for 3 hours it will kill them. Never tried it, though

Fill a container such as a coffee can with several inches of water and then add several drops of dish detergent. Drop the slugs and snails into the water and it should quickly neutralize them.

Ah, didn't realise it was that simple!  I tried salt solutions on earlier hunts but never got the concentration right - they kept swimming to the side and crawling up!  I got up to 3/4 tsp in a cup of water.

Hopefully my hunting days are over now

OG, you've inspired me.  This is now hanging beside the door out to the patio  

Kiwi, just now saw that you put up the sign for your garden.