Yes, this is what I saw a few days ago crawling across my front walk.
A SLUG…ughhh!
If you live in a wet zone like I do in Western Washington…if you garden in this area…you shudder at the thought…the very sight of this nemesis makes your garden loving heart break.
They will eat your entire newly sprouted garden if you are not careful, they will eat much of your mature garden too…all the while leaving their icky trail of snot behind them. Seriously folks can I empasize enough I how detest these?
Did you know that this slug can produce 200 offerspring this season? And its offspring can also produce 200 offspring? Do you know how many slugs that is?
TOO MANY!
I used to pay my boys a dime a piece for slugs. They would go out just after dark with flashlights and come back with over 30 each all impaled together on long sticks like marshmallows ready to roast. It was not pretty.
I tried getting ducks, which love slugs…but they left such a mess behind themselves it wasn’t worth the trade off.
I’ve done beer traps, environmentally responsible bait, yeast/sugar water, salt. copper…you name it ,I’ve tried it.
But today I am using one of my most oft used weapons in this war…
And feel not one bit of remorse over it either…
So what pest do you wage war against in your garden?
Not Dabbling In Normal 
I know what you mean, after it rains here in the fall and spring time of the year and they are all over the side walks yuck, my son will take the salt and dry them right up. Even though they are all ugly, I have to say that the ones we have seem to be even uglier!
Thanks for the photos! I’ve never seen a slug! (sorry)
We must have them though because there were holes in my Hostas.
until … I rinsed, saved and crushed our eggshells one fall-through-winter-early spring season and made a circle of crushed shells around each of the hostas.
I haven’t had a hole since. It also discouraged the cats from scratching in the beds where the eggshells are!
I’ve also read that copper mesh surrounding a plant/garden will also do the trick.
What makes us weep is juniper rust and entomosporium.
Click to access 10.3-disease.pdf
Both fungi that live in the soil. Juniper rust can turn 5 acres (aprox. 5,000 bushes) of saskatoons into bloated, spiney, oozing masses. The berries look like one of those soft-spiney kid’s balls, oozing snot. Not a pretty site. Himself has forbidden me to post the photos online, but there are a few in the pdf linked above. They really are gross. We’ve lost two complete picking seasons, 2004 and 2005 to them.
Entomosporium just turns the leaves into crispy potato chips that crumble to dust at the touch. Oh, and kill the bushes as they don’t seem to want to survive without leaves, the finicky buggers!
These two fungi are why we cannot be a completely organic farm.
Little orange dots in the spring can start a full fledged panic.
I have three nasty pests. The first was squash vine borers, which I solved by not growing any C. pepo anymore (except zucchini which can fruit well before being taken down). I grow C. moschata which is resistant to the borers. The second are the chipmunks that eat my tomatoes before they are all ripe and don’t even bother to finish them. I would share, but they are like little kids that have to lick all the cookies so no one else can have them. I solved that problem with bird netting. They hate getting their little feet caught in it and stay away. The third is your nemesis, the slug. I hate slugs. We are pretty wet out here on the east coast too, but the last two years were wet beyond measure. My typical nightly slug hunts didn’t seem to even slow down the damage. This year I’m resorting to Sluggo. I’ve given up the battle and will now put iron phosphate around my brassicas and little cucumber seedlings.
I don’t have a slug problem here. My biggest garden frustration is flea beetles! They destroy my eggplants every year unless I cover them with remay. I’m hoping the guinea hens will help me out this year.
Goats, groundhogs, chickens, the cow. We don’t have anything left for little pests like slugs. (we have some fencing issues that we are still working on.)
I do like beer and salt for slugs. (if you bread them in a salty breading, deep fry them and drink lots of beer while you eat them they are quite good. As soon as you turn them into food they disappear.)
Flea beetles and bean beetles have given us fits in the past.
With how wet last summer was, we had slugs too (but ours are orange?). Little icky bastards! I tried to beer trap, to no avail, so i started tossing them from the garden (naive me) and this year, if they’re as bad, it’s full-scale war and I’ll be sending out my boys with sharp sticks, too. They’re young enough that it won’t cost me anything other than the ick factor.
Our yearly battle isn’t so much a garden pest as an outdoor pest. Living in the mountains with lots of streams means we have flying bug problems. If it’s not the mosquitoes (when the water isn’t flowing so much) it’s the black flies (when the water *is* flowing). They make it so I don’t even want to go outside, and dashes to the garden are quick for the evening ingredients for dinner. Mosquitoes, especially, love me.
We’ve always had a slug problem. I’ve had good luck with Sluggo, but you have to reapply it after every rain.
I enjoy the pick-and-fling method. I like to imagine I can hear them screaming as they fly through the air.
Last year was a bad year. We had slugs in the strawberry patch, cabbage worms ate all of our cabbages and white flies tried to kill our blackberry and raspberry bushes. I’m hoping this year will be better.
Great photos! I have to say, our slugs seem like teeny nothings compared to yours. We have the little 1″ orange variety, and the chickens seems to take care of them.
The last two years, our flea beetles were really bad. I started referring to my eggplant as the “sacrificial lamb” in my garden. Once the eggplant was decimated, however, they started in on the broccoli. I’ve given up on eggplant for now.
You need ducks – they go crazy for slugs of any kind and aren’t too hard on the garden (don’t scratch). Borrow someone’s duck and watch it get fat while your veggies stick around to grow big and tall.
Deer, elk, bears and now a neighbor has been feeding wild turkeys which I think will be the worst of all. Oh, and someone has let loose a least one bunny. But I think it doesn’t have much of a future,,,
i let my chickens free range in the yard several times a week. they do a great job of plucking up slugs and their eggs.
I do the pick and fling method also and then hope a bird is watching. They just never seem to go away tho.
I hate to admit that I really like slugs. Of course I don’t like them in my garden but otherwise they don’t bother me.
Deer and elk are the main garden predators here, and those slugs in your photos are banana slugs and they are detritivores, which means they eat decomposing plant material, not plants. But they do get blamed because they are so visible and quite large.
Last year we had three plagues.
Those pesky cabbage worms. This year will be row covered from the second they go in. Hopefully I get cabbage this year.
Flea beetles. They killed every last eggplant plant. This year I will be starting my own under lights and putting them out bigger and earlier. I hope they will be much larger than they were this year when the flea beetles hit. The one year I had them quite big when they went out they suffered through flea beetle season but came back. Crossing my fingers this year.
Japanese beetles. Green beans lived through it but man there were a lot. The chickens like them though.
Slugs? No slugs yet. Though people around me seem to have lots of them. Hope I do things the same this year and have none.
stink bugs, Japanese beetles
Hi inadvertentfarmer Just read your article and thought you would like to know of a brilliant troublesome pests in the garden protector….I like you and most gardeners suffer from slugs and snails in this damp weather and in fact now that the climate has changed we have the slug and snail problem all year round, I have tried beer traps, copper tape, and wire salt, egg shells, even throwing them in my neighbours garden etc,etc all these methods are not practical long lasting and are harmful to our wildlife. recently a lady gardener recommended a new device to control slugs and snails called the slugbell she has used it and found it to be absolutely brilliant at controlling them I have just ordered 6 of them to place around my flowers and vegetable garden ,here is there web page http://www.slugbell.com they use both Organic or Normal Metaldehyde bug pellets and that the small amount of pellets needed will last up to three months.!!! as they don’t dissolve in the soil and are pet i.e. Cat , Dog and wildlife Safe Brilliant for pet owners , I will try anything to keep my garden looking how it should whilst protecting natures cycle. Michael from United kingdom
Re matronofhusbandry response:
Make sure you know what is causing the damage so you can put the right measures in place and not kill beneficial organisms.
oh i HATE THEM! but mine have shells: the evil snails. they’re on the side of the house, on the driveway, along the planters, wedged in crevices, and all over my kale and broccoli! Salt salt, sluggo sluggo, pick and throw pick and throw. evil doers!
I am not sure what to do….I was in my backyard one day and all the sudden there are over 30 slugs on my sidewalk going toward my porch…and mind u i have been in this house for months and never saw slugs. I pour salt on all of them and later like an hour later 15 20 came back….i have no idea what to do….i have never seen this many. Is it possible for them to travel in packs like that. If any has a answer please email me
erinsaki@hotmail.com
Thanks wolfpack
I personally have never seen slugs travel like that…I think I would be completely freaked out by the sight!
I googled it and could not find an answer to your question. I did find a good site for natural slug control…I was especially interested in the killing of slug with caffeine.
Here is the site
http://www.eartheasy.com/grow_nat_slug_cntrl.htm
How are your slug problems now?
Unfortunately your slug looks like a banana slug, which is a beneficial insect.
Here in the Pacific Northwest, I have horrible slug problems. I’m totally fed up with them and after messing around with various controls and spending gobs of money, I’m finally on a mission to find out which remedies work and which don’t. Thought you might be interested in reading about the experiments.
http://amysoddities.blogspot.com/2010/09/slugs.html