You can choose to pick slugs off your shady perennials like me, or you can follow our tips for taking care of slugs and snails in the garden!

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Treating Slugs and Snails

Full disclosure: my parents’ garden growing up was hot and dry, so I didn’t realize that snails and slugs were such a nuisance until I was working here! My mistake: slugs account for overnight and early morning damage to vegetables, fruit trees, berries, and plenty of ornamental perennials, like the hostas that I have picked off myself (yes, I was wearing gloves!). A couple of slugs or snails won’t cause enough damage to be concerned about, but the right conditions can create a haven for slugs which can cause some serious harms to your vegetation.

Sometimes slug or snail damage is hard to diagnose. Usually, tears or holes will appear in leaves, and the culprits are nowhere to be found! To confirm a slug diagnosis: you can find them by looking under large shady foliage, shuffle through leaf litter, or in generally moist areas, where they hide during the day. Or you can be lucky like me, and accidentally prod one while you’re gardening!

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Slugs and snails are attracted to moist areas with a lot of food, so you can exploit that:

1. Use gravel pathways to create drainage between garden sections.
2. Use direct irrigation to reduce the amount of excess humidity and standing water in the garden.
3. Remove old leaves as soon as possible to keep food sources and shelter limited.
4. Create “shelters” for them: prop up boards for them to seek shelter. In the early evening, lift the board and find them there, waiting to be picked. If you want to think of it as slug farming, you go right ahead.

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Removing Slugs:

1. You can do as I do and remove them by hand. Be sure to wear gloves and dispose of them promptly.
2. Encourage birds and natural predators to live in your yard. Maybe you don’t want toads and garter snakes (!) in your lawn, but you can have bird feeders nearby; lure the birds in with some seeds, and then they’ll start searching out other food sources. Birds love a yummy escargot snack!
3. Use copper wire barriers around vegetation to prevent the snails and slugs from entering the area. Copper is a non-toxic deterrent that does not pose harm to any other creatures. The theory is that an electrolyte in their slime reacts with the copper and produces a charge that the slugs and snails will often avoid. This is a mild deterrent, since slugs will cross a copper barrier if they are desperate, but definitely worth a try for a small infestation!
4. Safer’s has a Slug and Snail Bait which is effective. It can be broadcast in the general area of a garden, or it can be used as a barrier around the edges of garden sections. You can produce a barrier around your vegetation and scatter the bait between plants if the slugs and snails are also located within the garden area. The bait should not be harmful to pollinators or beneficial insects.

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Best of luck with your snails and slugs! As always, bring your damaged leaves and vegetation to us if you need help confirming a slug infestation, or if you want help keeping them out of your cabbages!