Re: [CH] slugs
Mary McGee Wood (mary@cs.man.ac.uk)
Wed, 8 Jul 1998 12:44:07 +0100 (BST)
A few words of caution here.
> take your salt shaker and
> salt them down. You will get instant gratification as you see them turn
> themselves inside out to rid themselves of the salt.
Sprinkling salt on the slugs will quickly raise the salt level in
your soil high enough to be harmful to your plants. Once this has
happened, the only cure on a sensible time scale is to dig out and
replace the top several inches of soil. And the slugs often recover,
especially in damp weather.
> Also, you can bury
> cans with their lips at ground level. Fill to near the top with beer. The
> slugs will race each other to see who can drown first ;-)
> I have heard that you can use water, yeast and I would guess a little sugar
> instead of beer (in case it hurts you to waste it). The slimy little
> buggers are attracted to the yeast in the beer not the fine combination of
> malt and hops *g*
Yeast and sugars attract them. You also need a reasonably high alcohol
content to paralyze them so that they actually drown - they can spend
quite a long time submerged in water or even in beer of up to 2% or 3%
alcohol and come out quite happy. Fermented fruit juice works well.
(Dilute fruit juice slightly, sprinkle in brewing yeast if available,
baking yeast if not, leave at room temperature for a few days or until
it stops fizzing, set out for slugs.)
Set the cans or saucers with their lips not at ground level but between
one and two inches above. Otherwise you will also drown a lot of black
ground beetles, who are one of the best natural predators of slugs.
The "bug juice" principle works in reverse for slugs: they are attracted
to dead slugs! I now go out at night, hand-pick them, cut them in half with
a scissors, and leave the remains on some cabbage plants left over from
last year, well away from the plants I'm protecting. My tomatoes, which
were decimated last year, are untouched so far.
My chiles are all inside, so not at risk. I did notice that the jalapenos
have suffered a bit from aphids but the scotch bonnets - which give off
a lovely spicy smell when you brush the leaves - are clear. Has anyone
else found hotter chiles to be less prone to pests?
best,
Mary
in Manchester, England