How to Keep Your Garden Slug Free Naturally

Slugs are a garden nemesis.

Slugs can cause serious damage to a garden. Treatments include pesticides based on iron phosphates mixed with food baits or metaldehyde. You can try non-chemical methods to keep the slugs out of your garden and away from your prized flowers or vegetables.

Things You'll Need

• Copper strips or tape
• Beer
• Lemonade
• Pie plate
• Cup
• Diatomaceous earth or lava rock

Instructions

1. Water your plants in early morning rather than at night to reduce slug damage. Slugs are more active at night than they are during the day, and warm, dry conditions are unfavorable to them, notes the University of Minnesota Extension.

2. Place thin strips of copper strips or tape, a commercially sold and effective barrier for slugs, and wrap them around flower pots like a ribbon, to prevent snails from scooting up the sides and into your flowers. Set strips of copper around the soil edges in a raised bed garden as a slug barrier.

3. Place beer or lemonade in a pie plate or buried cup near places where you've spotted slugs. Once the slugs venture into the liquid, they drown. Discard their bodies and renew the beer or lemonade every four days.

4. Edge your flowerbeds with diatomaceous earth or lava rock. The jagged surface of these products lacerates the soft-bodied pest if it attempts to travel over it. These work best in dry conditions.

Tips & Warnings

• Follow the manufacturer's directions closely when using diatomaceous earth, as it can affect mucous membranes if inhaled.

References

• University of California IPM Online: Snails and Slugs
• University of Minnesota Extension: Slugs in Home Gardens