After writing a post about trying to not eat meat anymore due to animal cruelty, I am now here to tell you about my mass murdering of slugs. The sad irony is not lost on me.
Half a year ago, I moved houses. We bought a free standing home with a big-ish garden surrounding it. It was autumn around that time and in our last garden, we have had to watch all of our home grown kale plants being eaten to a bloody stump due to slugs. They had also snacked on most of my strawberries. Then, in our new garden, I saw the biggest slugs I had ever seen in my life, happily hanging out in the raspberry plants.
Oh boy...
I'll tell you, by then I hated these nasty, slimy creatures and I was very much afraid about a slug problem in our new garden. Boy was I right.
I've grown fruit in my gardens for a couple of years now and it's relatively easy. Some berry bushes, strawberry plants and maybe a couple of fruit trees. They don't require all that much attention. Herbs are generally easy aswell. I am quite new to veggies though, so seeing my kale being eaten to shreds was quite frustrating for a first real try.
With my new, big and sunny garden, I figured I'd go a little bigger. I grew some arugula and spinach outside and planted some leftover, biological potatoes. I have a windowsill that basically catches sunlight all day long, so I took some seeds from my favorite small tomato and hoped they would grow. They did. I have many tomato plants now. I also had a few pumpkin seeds stored away and had taken a few seeds out of a bell pepper.
These plants grew perfectly and for the last couple of days, I've been planting them in my garden. They were starting to flower, so I figured they needed bee access. It's not supposed to get too cold at night anymore, so I'm hoping for the best.
However, whenever I work in the garden, I do notice the slugs. A couple of weeks ago, I started stomping on them on the patio. I've stomped quite a few, but it's nothing compared to what's in the rest of my garden. They have begun eating my growing plants and they've visited one of my tomato plants aswell (which the internet says they don't even like). They visited the one I surrounded with wood shavings, which is supposed to deter them! Even the mint plant, which they are supposed to hate, has been eaten.
We have birds in the area, but they are no match for the amount of slugs in our garden. And honestly, I think they prefer the snails, which are also abundant here.
So now, I either accept that all of my garden will get eaten, veggies, fruits, herbs and pretty plants alike, or I try to do something about this plague. I choose the second, because my garden is what I got excited about! Growing my garden, growing my own food! I don't want to see all of it destroyed by a slug plague!
Which leaves me with a few options:
- Use poison, which is harmful to birds and other small animals who eat the slugs aswell;
- Use eco poison, which shouldn't harm the other creatures, but still, it basically starves the slugs, making for a very slow and unpleasant death;
- Make traps, which range from papers on the ground, which will collect many snails and you can then do whatever you want with them, to beer traps, where they will slowly drown/disintegrate (doesn't sound very pleasant either).
None of these options sound very ideal. I don't want them to suffer a long time, but I also don't have any place to put them after catching them. There isn't any slug sanctuary where they can happily eat their fill! If I let them loose anywhere in the area, they'll just crawl back into my garden eventually. So if I want to safe my garden, but don't want them to suffer too much, I basically should continue my stomping. It's the quickest way.
So that's what I've been doing, stomping on slugs, but I've upped my game. I'm now collecting them from my garden and then stomping on them. I feel aweful, like a mass murderer, but I don't know what else to do. It's the least torturous way to kill them, it's over quickly... Yes, now I have to do the killing myself and feel bad afterwards, but atleast this way gives them the least amount of suffering. And I should feel bad, right? I mean I am killing them.
It sucks that all of these so-called friendly deterents don't work. The wood clippings or mint plants are of no concern to them. So now I'm asking you:
How do you get rid of slugs in your garden? Have you had any kind of success with a less murderous kind of solution?
Thanks for reading and I hope someone can give me a friendlier and doable alternative.
P.S.: I feel so bad posting this in the EcoTrain community, as it's not a very eco-friendly post. I do, however, feel it is exactly the right kind of people who will have friendlier solutions for me!
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+1 For not using poison.
You need predators, do you have any toads in your garden? Where I live, we have giant predatory crickets and giant centipedes that keep the numbers down. In Europe, there are nematodes that you could get as biological control. Contact an agricultural advisor
Hmm that's good advice, I'll check on that/ I don't think we have toads, not enough water in the area.
I know sometimes there is a battle between eco friendly and keeping our crops healthy and safe. For me i don't have any option rather than using a poison. but always remember to put in the night time, and collect the dead one in the morning so that it will not be eaten by other animal.
That's some great advice I'll keep in mind, thank you so much for this!
I do the beer traps but it is pretty disgusting. Just because every day or so you have to empty a tub of dead slug stew out and refill it. Urrgh
Yeah, that doesn't sound too appealing. Although, stomping on a hand full of slugs isn't the greatest thing in the world either :-(
It is probably better than when you pop out the back door in the dark and take a step and hear a crunch and realise you have a snail under you!! :OD
Oh gosh, I hate that sound :D
Hmmm you need birds 😋👌👌👌 they can fix this problem .
Let loose the chickens!
Sadly the neighbourhood birds can't keep up and I don't really want chickens ;-)
Try put up ordinary bird boxes 😅😅 I have a lot of these birds ( Commone Starling ) in my garden and I have no problem.
We have a few of those! But it's a good idea, I should add a couple more :D
Cool :))
If you have a lot of berry bushes then put them on the net then this birds will not eat the berries, they like also lot berry, and cherries :)) But all rest is cool .
Yeah, I fear for my cherries! I have many berries, but mostly red ones which I don't like too much. I think they'll be too much for the birds to take anyway, so we'll share :-)
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Drunk Slug Execution is almost an awesome band name... and relatively humane.
Haha, I like it! Yeah I'm not sure how much they suffer... they might be too drunk to notice.