Slugs
Don’t you just hate slugs?
Giant slugs that not only gnaw on your strawberries, tomatoes, and other formerly-fine produce, but leave sliiimmmeeeee all over what’s left…. Don’t even get me *started* about what happens if you walk out into that yard barefoot first thing in the morning to get some mint for the tea!
This looks like the rascals that visit my garden. Thanks for the image to Jonathan Feinberg*
Fortunately, these despicable pests have a giant Achilles heel (er, foot). Slugs like cheap beer. Maybe slus like good beer too, but I’ll never find out. Beer Slug Traps work great to get rid of these slimy so-and-sos, and are beyond easy to build.
It goes like this:
Make a cup about three inches deep with smooth sides. Cut-off plastic soda bottles or the bottom half of the aluminum beer cans both work well. Bury this cup up to its lip in the soil at the likely slug-entrances to your garden, or just anywhere near the food source if there’s no tell-tale slime trail. Put the skunkiest cheap beer you’ve got at least slug-deep in the bottom of the cup. (The skunky and cheap part is my vindictiveness and so is optional.)
This is GOOD beer… it’s for drinking ice cold after a long day’s work at The Place, NOT for feeding to slugs.
Slugs crawl into the beer and die happy…die being the operative word there. It’s pretty disgusting to empty the trap, but a few nights of that will cure the problem. Here’s me not inserting an image of this, in case you’re cruising this on your lunch break.
You’re welcome.
I’ve read it’s the carbon dioxide from the yeast that actually attracts them; and warming water to bread-making temperature and adding a teaspoon of bread yeast works as well. I haven’t tried that version.
*(Own work) [CC BY-SA 2.5 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5)], via Wikimedia Commons
