How To Defeat the Garden Slug

Few things haunt a gardener’s nightmares like a slug invasion. These slimy pests eat double their body weight in a day, and can munch through your seedlings overnight. Fortunately, there are a few tricks you can use to keep slugs at bay.

Make the habitat less appealing.

To keep slugs from moving into your neighborhood, eliminate their natural habitats by hoeing your garden regularly. Slugs love to hide and lay eggs under weeds, boards, and other debris, so clean your garden regularly.

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Block their path.

Slugs hate crawling over dry, scratchy materials like gravel, sand, lime, and diatomaceous earth. Diatomaceous earth also does double duty as a pet-safe cockroach killer. Epsom salt is another great way to deter slugs, since the salt sucks out moisture while the magnesium nourishes plants.

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Destroy their tracks.

Slugs like to leave a little breadcrumb trail of slug slime for their friends to alert them to delicious plants. If you do find a slug infestation in your garden, spray vinegar on the slime trails to destroy the path.

Slugs are picky eaters.

Slugs may eat a lot, but they don’t eat everything. Strong smelling herbs like mint, chives, garlic, and fennel repel slugs, and make your dinner taste delicious.

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Put the slugs to work.

You may not want slugs in your garden, but they aren’t all bad. Gardeners can humanely relocate slugs to their compost bin, where they’ll munch away and help break down compost into nutrient rich soil. Just keep a barrier around your compost bin to keep slugs from wandering back into the garden.

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