Blues Ma wrote:

Doesn't dusting with diatomaceous earth help discourage your slugs ?
I've found that putting it on the soil around their favorite snack plants
really

turns 'em off.

Dorothy

Although it may not hold true this year, I've found that fresh coffee
grounds, applied liberally at the first sign of damage / infestation clears
the matter up for a full growing season.

I'm not finding slugs in my garden (which was treated in this fashion) but
only in the paths and compost piles around it (which were not treated with
the coffee grounds). In the paths and compost I have found two distinct
varieties of slugs ... that long orange guy and the shorter gray slugs I am
used to seeing. However, I have not seen any sign of either variety in my
garden since treating it with coffee grounds this spring. And that's the
important point; I don't have a generic hate for slugs ... I just don't
want them damaging my garden.

We've had an extremely wet spring so I am open to the possibility that I may
have to reapply the coffee grounds this year. Normally a single application
lasts the whole year. So I want to know, as I do with coffee grounds, that
what I am applying will decompose into useful compounds and not build up
into a problem somewhere down the road. Diatomaceous earth gets into the
body joints of a lot of different insects, including beneficials such as
ladybugs and lacewings. I am, therefore, reluctant to use it.

I've seen a lot of websites claiming that DE does not hurt earthworms, but I
also ran across this one
http://www.qc.ec.gc.ca/ecotrucs/solu.../disorders.htm that claims
that DE is an effective control for them. Since the sites that claim it's
safe are also selling it I tend to discount their claims of safety. The
site that claims it is a control for them does not sell it. I am leaning
toward the Environment Canada site that claims it is harmful.

I quote this excerpt from another source:
http://www.simplyhydro.com/proper_insecticides.htm

"4. ... Animals, humans and birds however, can digest diatomaceous earth and
are not effected by it. CAUTION: Earthworms, honeybees, caterpillars,
predator mites and ladybugs will die if they ingest diatomaceous earth. "

Yesterday, for the heck of it, I counted the worms in just two forkfulls of
aged (~1 year) compost. I got 18 in the first forkful and 22 in the second
one. Considering that I put about 20 forkfulls of compost through hardware
mesh (picking out the worms as I went) and then onto my garden yesterday,
that's about 400 worms added to my beds in a single day.

I don't want to needlessly kill a single one of them and I don't trust the
vendors of DE to tell me the truth about its safety.

Bill