Selena from Tacoma sent in a few pictures of her strawberry pallet garden recently–along with a plea for help. She wrote,
I built a strawberry box in my garden this year using a reclaimed pallet thinking that elevating the strawberries would help keep the slugs away. However, I have found that baby slugs have no problem making their way up the box to get to the berries! Do you have a suggestion on how to keep the slugs away without using chemicals? I would prefer an organic or homemade remedy.
Yep, that is going to be a problem. Obviously, your slugs have a taste for the good stuff. 😉
The key to treating them organically {in my opinion} is catching them early. There are a couple of different methods you can try. First up: beer. Not for you as a coping mechanism, but for the slugs. They love the fermented yeast in the beer and will make their way into the beer where they will eventually drown. {If you aren’t into purchasing alcohol, no worries, you can use non-alcoholic beer.} Just take the can, a shallow yogurt cup or something like it {a kid’s to-go applesauce would work great} and stick it into the pallets, level with the strawberries. Fill the container with beer and check it in the morning. You should have dead-as-a-door-nail slugs floating in it.
Beer is just a first line of defense, though. You should also combine it with hand-picking any slugs you see. They like to come out and wreak all sorts of havoc at night, so catching them to squish them {a very therapeutic past-time, if I do say so myself} can be tricky.
For a little more aggressive treatment, you’ll have to go with organic options that you can buy at your Home and Garden store. I know quite a few gardeners and chicken owners who swear by diatomaceous earth, which is still an organic option. It’s a white powder made from crushed fossils of diatoms { a rock}. It basically cuts the slugs as they crawl across it. {People also use it as an insecticide, to give their chicken dust baths in order to prevent poultry lice and mites, etc.} I haven’t personally used it, so I can’t swear by it, but again, I have heard really good things about it.
My personal favorite organic method is Sluggo. It still qualifies as an acceptable treatment in organic gardening. It is basically iron phosphate {which doesn’t harm pets or other wildlife}. It causes slugs to stop feeding, and as a result, die. I have found it to be incredibly effective, when other methods have failed. You have to be pretty religious about applying it weekly {during watering season}, as both a treatment and maintenance.
I am sure there are other methods you can try, but those are the ones that I am most familiar with. If any of you have tried other successful slug abatement, make sure to leave it in the comments below!
~Mavis
Maggie White says
I was just thinking about this yesterday when I noticed that slugs had invaded one of my garden beds and were going to town on my Swiss Chard. The DE is a great idea – we keep a ton of it on hand for our pool filter!
A word on Sluggo, though – I bought some last year to help with slugs and before I could treat the garden, one of my dogs ate some of it. Iron phosphate is lethal in large doses and my 25 pound beagle ingested twice the lethal amount according to the product’s MSDS! Luckily we caught her in the act and she was all better after a $300 trip to the vet. Just a warning, because apparently Sluggo is delicious!
Mavis says
Good to know, I’ll make sure to keep Lucy out of it. Thanks!
Jill says
I’ve heard that slugs/snails won’t cross a copper barrier. Perhaps you could nail a strip of copper around the base of your planter to prevent them. I haven’t actually tried this, so I can’t vouch for the effectiveness.
Melissa Doroquez says
I had some copper stripping that I nailed at the top of one of my beds and it worked great but it was kind of pricey. Probably could find it cheaper but I was a newbie. I just heard someone mention copper pipe as an alternative and I must say that I think I will be perusing that aisle at the hardware store the next time I am there!
Aileen says
Yes, here in Ireland the slugs just love us or more particularly my plants. I can tell you that the following do not work….
– baked, crushed egg shells
– soot
– salt (dissolves in the rain quickly)
Now for what does work:
– Beer traps – I use an old frying pan with a frisbee as a lid which has slits in it for slug access
– Thick copper wire all around the bed
– NemaSlug – expensive yes but it worked for a full year for me
Happy hunting!
Sandra says
My dog also found Sluggo to be delicious!
Kelly says
We have a strawberry patch in a portion of our raised bed. We cannot keep the squirrels out – any ideas?
Melissa says
We put tree netting over our strawberry patch to keep out the rodents.
renay says
Save your egg shells and crush them up not too fine. Lay them at least two inches wide around your plants. The shells are sharp and slugs won’t cross them. I have tried the copper – didn’t work for me, Sluggo can get into animals, so I quit that one. Go out at night with a head lamp (yep, like a miner! haha) and hand pick them – then throw them in your chicken coop – the girls love them!
julia says
if diatomaceous earth works, then would crushed egg shells or wood ash do the same job perhaps?
Karen at A Glimpse Into My Reveries says
I use Sluggo in my organic garden but go through a lot due to frequent waterings of my raised beds.
I also get huge satisfaction from the manual Stab ‘n Sling ‘Em method!
I use a sturdy skewer and a quick stab just behind the head and sling them into the field behind my gardens. If you can’t find a sturdy enough skewer, buy dowling the same width of pencil and sharpen with a pencil sharpener. Works great with my electric pencil sharpener !!
Do NOT re-sharpen after use. Eww! Hahaha
Cecily says
Selena your problem is twofold. You are providing the slugs with both food (your strawberries) and, worse yet, a dark moist home (the straw mulch). Remove the straw, put a layer of sand all around the outside of the box and set a couple of beer traps out. If you choose you can apply DE with a bulb duster. You’ll have to water more without the mulch but your strawberry bed won’t be the hospitable place for slugs that it currently is. Wishing you success.
heidi says
I thought that a strip of sandpaper would stop slugs. Haven’t tried it, because we are going to put copper wire around our raised beds.
Sarah says
I have had the best luck with copper! I put down sluggo about once a month for those that squeeze by the copper. A few years ago I used beer– my slugs liked Coors Light the best- and had great success with that as well! DE also works really well too. I put that on my flowers for the slugs {and on my animals for fleas!}.
Dave Texeira says
I have used PEST-RID by Iguana-Rid LLC out of Florida. It’s a all natural spray that creates a barrier in your garden area.
Big problem in Florida with Iguanas and other critters that love vegetable and flower beds for ‘ take-out “.. They have a website.
Rebecca Sullivan says
I haven’t haven’t had slugs since I moved. However, when I used to have slugs I’d dig a shallow plastic container… (like you get takeout food in some places) so that the edge was flush with the ground. into that I’d put a stirred-up mixture of flour sugar yeast and water… so that it was just a bit liquidy… now as this stuff starts working it is like bread dough… smells wonderful to slugs, and the flour clogs up their insides… it used to work like a charm…
Joan Sullivan says
FYI, diatemaceous earth is deadly to honey bees. If they get it on their bodies and return to the hive, it can wipe out an entire colony.