No matter whether you’re a vegetable gardener or you love to plant flowers, one of your biggest pests is probably garden slugs. Slugs look like snails without the shells. They slime their way along either in the early morning or in the evening when everything is covered with dew. They also come out after a rain to look for plants to feed on. If you let slugs get in your gardens, they’ll soon take over, and you can then kiss your Asters good-bye. Before that happens, when you first spot one of these voracious eaters, learn some easy-to-use homemade remedies to get rid of bothersome garden slugs!
1. Table Salt is a Slug’s Enemy
Just like garden slugs are enemies to our garden plants, table salt spells “a-d-i-o-s” to these pests. Simply sprinkle a little table salt on the bodies of the garden slugs and they will “melt” right before your eyes. Just be careful not to get any salt on your plants, or they’ll dry up too!
2. Got Beer?
Another homemade remedy to get rid of bothersome garden slugs is to use some beer. It’s really quite simple and pretty inexpensive. Just place a low pie tin near the plants in your vegetable or flower garden. Pour about a half inch of beer into the tin. The garden slugs will be attracted to the beer, and they’ll climb into it. But, once inside, they’ll be trapped! After you’ve trapped a number of slugs, you’ll need to dump the beer and replace it with fresh brew.
3. Recycle Eggshells for Your Garden
Garden slugs crawl everywhere they go. And because they crawl, they won’t cross over certain rough materials, such as eggshells. You can recycle eggshells for your garden to get rid of bothersome garden slugs. Just break up the shells so they’re in small pieces. Then, place the pieces around vegetable or flower plants you want to protect.
4. Household Ammonia to the Rescue
Fill a spray bottle half way up with tap water. Then, fill the rest of the bottle with household ammonia. Replace the sprayer and shake the bottle gently to mix. Spray this homemade solution directly on garden slugs to eradicate them. Don’t worry, the ammonia won’t hurt your vegetable or flower plants. In fact, it helps fertilize them!
5. Garden Slugs and Copper Don’t Mix
Copper is another material that garden slugs don’t like to crawl over. So, you can use this shiny metal as another homemade remedy to get rid of these bothersome pests. The easiest, and probably cheapest, copper to use is copper pot and pan scratchers. Just like household ammonia, you can pick these up cheap at your local Big Lots® or dollar store.
To use copper scratchers to get rid of bothersome garden slugs, you can cut a hole in the middle of them and slip them over the stems of young plants. Or, cut them into strips and wrap them around larger, established plants. You can even wrap flower pots with copper to keep garden slugs from getting into your plants.
