10 effective ways to fight slugs without chemistry

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For many gardeners, slugs are a real nightmare. Although you might think, what’s wrong with these seemingly peace-loving sedentary beings? But in fact, they can cause significant harm to your plants and crops. Not only do slugs persistently eat leaves, flowers and fruits in spring and summer, so with the onset of cold weather these land mollusks move to the cellar and continue to destroy what you carefully cultivated and harvested. Mostly slugs crawl out at night, and you may not have a clue how many there are in your garden.

We have selected for you the 10 best, in our opinion, folk ways of preventing and combating these uninvited guests of your garden.

1. Water the plants in the morning, not in the evening

Wet places are very attractive for slugs, so the first step to not attracting them to your garden is to give preference to morning watering of plants instead of evening watering.

2. Do not create potentially attractive slug spots

Remove weeds on your site regularly, because slugs like to hide in their cool shade. Also, in order not to create nooks for them to live in, in the beginning of spring do a general cleaning in the garden and vegetable garden: scoop out old leaves, loosen the soil, because even large clumps of land can become a refuge for these slippery pests.

When planting, leave enough space between the plants for good air circulation.

3. Bring slugs into your natural garden.

If you breed ducks, geese or chickens, they will help you fight these pests. If not, you can make bird feeders to settle in your garden. Frogs also destroy slugs, so you can place several buckets of water in the garden in shady places to attract them.

Another natural enemy of slugs is the hedgehog. If you manage to settle a family of hedgehogs in your garden, consider that the problem will be largely solved without much effort and expense.

4. Catch slugs in “cozy” places

If you are a person who doesn’t offend a fly, and especially do not want to destroy slugs, you can catch them and take them away from your site. And to collect them in one place is quite simple. As already mentioned, slugs like to hide in dark, humid places, so you can leave a damp board or log near the place where snails actively eat your crop at night.

To attract slugs, you can put in the garden what they especially love, for example, cabbage leaves or peel from citrus fruits. After the destruction of your plants, these gluttonous creatures will decide to rest and gather in the place you propose that is convenient for them. In the morning you can gather a whole company of pests and proceed further at your discretion - to execute or have mercy.

5. Salt against slugs

Sprinkling slugs with salt is an old as the world, and especially cruel way of dealing with them. In addition, it requires a lot of effort. Perhaps this method is suitable for those who are so tired of the harm done by them that they crave real revenge.

You must go to the garden or garden at night with a flashlight and a salt shaker. As a guide, look for plants loved by slugs. Find these slippery creatures near them, brush them off the leaves and sprinkle salt on them. She draws water from the slugs, and they slowly die.

6. Lure the slugs with drinks

Here, in one point, we combined several options for catching slugs: for beer, compote or milk - what do you like best or what is at home. This is a fairly loyal and simple method of dealing with all-consuming slugs, but it is more convenient for small areas.

All you need to do is just leave a flat plate with beer, milk or stewed fruit in the garden or in the garden where you have a problem with slugs. Instead of a flat plate, you can take a disposable glass and bury it in the ground, leaving an edge 1-3 cm above the ground.

The next morning you will find a plate or glass of dead slugs. You can also attract slugs with the following mixture: honey, yeast and a little water, boil until the liquid becomes viscous.

7. Halves of grapefruit - an effective bait for slugs

After eating grapefruit, take the halves of the peel and leave them near the plants that attract slugs. In the morning you will find in them whole groups of these snails without houses.

You can serve such an exotic breakfast in halves of grapefruit to the birds. They will be very grateful to you.

8. Melon against slugs

This is another simple way that you can try when at home there is a melon. After eating this juicy fruit, lay the peel in the garden and leave it overnight. In the morning, the inside of the peel will be covered with slugs, which you can deal with at your leisure.

9. Plant plants that repel slugs.

Slugs do not like pronounced aromas. Therefore, you can plant in the garden plants that repel these pests with their smell: lavender, sage, rosemary, garlic, onions, mint and others.

10. Processing plants with natural infusions against slugs

Another effective way to combat slugs is to spray plants with mustard infusion. You need to take 50 g of dry mustard, dilute in water (300 ml), let it brew. After this, add more water (so that there is 1 liter of liquid), and spray the plants with the resulting infusion in the evening after sunset.

As an alternative to mustard, you can use the infusion of garlic: squeeze a few cloves, throw into water, insist for a whole day. Add water to a volume of 1 liter and spray the plants.

We wish you success in the fight against slugs and good harvests! Write about your impressions of using the described methods in the comments. If you have any other ideas or positive experiences, we will be grateful if you share with us!