How To Remove Slugs From Your Garden

Slugs are a common garden pest that can cause extensive damage to the plants in your yard. If left unchecked, they can breed quickly and spread over a wide area, which can be costly to fix and replace. Thankfully, there are a number of things that you can do in order to reduce the overall number of slugs in your garden and help to keep your plants healthy. 

Copper 

Slugs do not react well with copper: if they come into contact with it, they will receive an electric shock (similar to a static shock) that will either kill or stun the slugs, and at the very least will discourage them from coming any closer. You can find copper garden guards or copper flashing at most hardware stores, which are easily and quickly installed around your garden beds to stop the progress of slugs throughout your yard. However, it should be kept in mind that copper is an expensive building material, and so this may not be the most cost-effective option available.

Citrus Peels

Leaving bits of lemon, orange, or lime peels throughout your garden serves as perfect bait for slugs, who will be attracted to the acidic remnants on the peels. Leave them out overnight, and collect them the next morning when they are covered with slugs. Leave any peels that haven't attracted slugs onto them: while they may have failed as slug bait, they do work well as compost. 

Vinegar

Put some white vinegar in a spray bottle and go hunting throughout your garden. Vinegar will shrivel up any slugs that it is applied to, allowing you to effectively spot treat areas of your garden that are badly infested with slugs. However, keep in mind that vinegar can also cause damage to plants and harm other beneficial insects within your garden, so it's best to apply it with care.

Gravel and Rocks

A slightly more affordable option than having copper flashing installed around your garden beds, while still deterring slugs from getting to your plants, is to have a bed or thin strip of hard material, like broken rocks and gravel, installed around your garden. Slugs have soft bodies, and thus are not adept at crossing such a barrier. Furthermore, such barriers can also aid with drainage around your yard and provide a certain aesthetic appeal to your garden design. However, it should be noted that gravel will not be completely effective at keeping slugs out of your garden, and using one of the above methods of removal is recommended to be used in concert with it.

For pest control, contact a company such as Bug Busters.

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