Battling slugs in the garden by playing the long game
I've been waging a war of attrition with these slimy creatures and may have enlisted a few surprising allies along the way
Let me tell you about me and the slugs. I’ve never had as many in my vegetable garden as this spring. They’ve eaten so many newly planted seedlings that I’ve given up trying to count. A longtime gardener here in the Berkshires told me she’s never seen it so bad, which offered me some consolation.
Slugs will eat most anything but seem particularly attracted to members of the brassica family, like broccoli, cabbage, kale, turnips and brussels sprouts. They’ll eat flowers — I suspect they were the culprits that ate a bunch of marigolds I had planted around the vegetable beds — and embed themselves inside otherwise gorgeous looking heads of lettuce, leaving tell-tale brown paths of partially eaten vegetation inside the leaves.
No garden soil creature may be more despised than this squishy gastropod mollusc. It hides in damp, dark places like leaves and wood by day and devours defenseless young plants at night, leaving a trail of slimy secretion in its wake.
I’ve been a little frustrated with them at times but I decided early to play the long game. It hasn’t been easy.
Here’s what I planted in the garden way back on March 15. Two varieties of beets, two types of kale, kohlrabi, broccoli, cabbage, spinach, broccoli rabe, plus a bunch of lettuce and some arugula. Two months later, the spinach, kohlrabi, broccoli rabe and arugula were still growing, along with one cabbage out of the six I planted. Everything else – and I’m talking about dozens of plants – were gone, most eaten to the ground.
I planted more kale, beets, cabbage and broccoli in April. Maybe a couple broccoli and kale plants survived. Once again the rest of the seedlings were defoliated, just nubs sticking out of the earth. I sowed more seeds under the LED lights in the basement. Those plants went into the garden a few weeks ago. Some are already gone.
Gardeners employ all manner of methods to combat slugs.. There are countless “slug killers” available in garden centers and on-line, many advertising themselves as organic. I’m sure they can be effective but I’m not interested in adding chemicals or other products of unclear constitution to my soil. One that seems safe is spreading the bed with diatomaceous earth, made from the fossilized remains of aquatic organisms. Slugs ingest the silica and dry up.
There are dozens of other methods that veteran gardeners recommend. Some involve simple garden maintenance: clearing spent leaves and other excess debris from beds, removing any unnecessary wood, spacing plants to allow more light to get to the soil, watering in the morning and limiting the water flow to the plants’ roots, avoiding their leaves.
Other remedies include spreading crushed eggshells, coffee grounds, wood ash or sawdust around plants. Slugs apparently don’t like crossing them. Copper wire or copper mesh stretched across the bed is supposedly another deterrent. The copper delivers an electric shock when it comes in contact with the slug’s slime. Some gardeners recommend placing old boards or overturned pots in pathways around garden beds to attract satiated slugs. In the morning, you can turn the boards or pots over and scrape the slugs into jars of soapy water.
All of these methods sound reasonable enough. I did place a couple boards in paths near the most affected beds last week. I haven’t found a slug under them yet. One slug control technique I haven’t tried and probably never will involves heading into the garden with a flashlight at night, going through your plants’ leaves and catching the slugs in the act. You pick the slugs off the leaves and dispose of them in whatever humane or diabolical way you see fit. The whole routine seems a bit excessive to me.
I did employ one old-time remedy. I buried about a half-dozen empty cat food and tuna fish cans to soil level in the beds and filled them with Modelo, a decent Mexican lager that was the only beer I had on hand. Slugs are attracted to the yeasty, fermented odor of beer and will dive right in, drowning themselves in the process. I caught some slugs, but then my gardening partner Frida decided she liked to drink the beer and licked the cans clean. Only a dog, right? I refilled the cans and then it rained that night and the beer got washed out.
By this time I had decided I was fighting a war of attrition. If the slugs ate a dozen seedlings, I’d plant two dozen. If they went after them, I’d plant some more. I’d wear them out. This was my Western Front.
And then I made a few new friends.
A few weeks back I started encountering a common garter snake in the garden. He doesn’t stick around long enough for me to see what he’s up to but I suspect he may be an ally in my battle with the slugs. Then a week ago, a toad emerged in the garden and it’s taken residence, too. And there’s a nesting robin in a nearby bush who swoops into the garden now and then and makes off with something in its mouth.
Snakes and toads, along with birds, beetles, turtles and fireflies, are natural partners for any gardener battling slugs. The snake and toad, and maybe the robin too, have become mine. I think they’re helping me restore some balance to the garden.
The other thing is this: Plants can be surprisingly durable. Like all living things they’re wired to survive.
A month or so ago I planted six brussels sprouts seedlings. I’ve never grown brussels sprouts before and am excited to have the space to grow them in my garden this year with the prospect of picking handfuls off the plants as the weather cools in the fall. Or I was excited, until a week after I put them into the ground. I discovered four of the plants had been completely eaten, and two were just hanging on. Even their remaining leaves were filled with holes from munching slugs.
I kept them watered and kept a close eye on them. The slugs seem to either have moved on to better things or, more hopefully, become victims to my resident snake and toad. Now those two plants are coming back. One in particular has several new leaves on it and seems to be growing. Elsewhere in the garden, just enough kale and broccoli, and my lone cabbage, seem to be heading toward maturity as well.
I guess this reminds me of a quality that’s useful to any gardener. Resiliency.
We’ve caught lots of slugs using beer in metal pie pans here in the Maryland Piedmont. Seems like a pretty good way to go for the slugs. Maybe yours don’t like Mexican food? I’ve wondered if granulated lyme would work, while also improving the acid soil.
What a great story, and so well told. Hope you and your new allies continue to score wins. (And how amusing to read about Frida slugging beer...)