How do i naturally keep the slugs away!?

[OldGuy43]

Sluggo is biodegradable and works really well.

http://www.biconet.com/crawlers/sluggo.html

Best thing we've found. Available at Lowe's.

 

[ducks4you]

Before we moved our back yard was mostly shade, and stayed very moist. I grew cucumbers and tomatoes and I had a slug problem. The BEST solution was to buy cheap beer in cans, cut the tops of the cans off and dig a hole to bury it. EVERY MORNING I found slugs drowned in the beer. You don't have to change the cans very often, and you aren't putting any chemical insecticides out to kill them, either.
"Keystone" is one of the cheapest.

 

[SuperChemicalGirl]

"Keystone" is one of the cheapest.

I found mine preferred Shipyard to Bud.

... not joking.

 

[cityfarmer]

We didn't have much luck with beer. However, our chickens have put a whooping on them. Maybe some of the other remedies will work.

 

[annageckos]

I have tried beer, didn't get any slugs. I did find a spider in there though, alive and well. Currently I am using crushed egg shells and DE. Plain egg shells work great too. I put a ring of egg shells around anything the slugs like and it keeps them away completely. I had a problem with slugs eating my strawberries earlier in the year, I put down a layer of egg shells and DE and haven't had any slug eaten strawberries since. I have also found out that lightning bug larva eat slugs and snails and we have more lightning bugs this year then I can ever remember seeing before.

 

[sparkles2307]

We didn't have much luck with beer. However, our chickens have put a whooping on them. Maybe some of the other remedies will work.

Be sure not to allow your chooks to free-range thru the garden because they'll eat all of your plants too.

 

[peteyfoozer]

I found that the shells from the sunflower seeds the birds spit out work great to keep slugs away, cuz they are sharp too. I used to just rake up under the bird feeder and put the shells around the stuff the slugs and snails like. Cocoa hulls also work. We raise meatie chickens and they feast on bugs without bothering my plants much (the ones they do, i just put a small cage over)

 

[ducks4you]

You can also slightly crush egg shells and put those at the base of your plants. They have sharp edges that the slugs cannot abide, so they look for the unprotected plants to feast on.

 

[Dave2000]

Natural gas and fire are parts of nature right? Flame thrower.

 

[grow_my_own]

I had issues a couple of years ago with slugs infesting my cruciferfous plants.

Here are a couple of things:

1) Salt will completely destroy the root systems of some of your plants, and I *highly* recommend against it, like, more vociferously than I can even tell you.

2) Slugs and snails are gastropods and have one thing in common: They cannot crawl over certain objects.

I had lost a whole crop of cauliflower to slugs before I found this remedy that is 100% completely natural.

Go to your local home improvement store and buy lava rock... the small stuff, the kind used for landscaping. Make little rings of lava rocks around your plants that you wish to keep free of slugs/snails. The snails and slugs *cannot* crawl across it. The microfine sharp edges of the lava rocks would shred them if they dared cross it.

Since trying this, I have not seen n'ary a single slug in ANY of my vegetables.