Thread: Slugs
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Old 02-06-2011, 03:19 AM posted to rec.gardens.edible
FarmI FarmI is offline
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First recorded activity by GardenBanter: Feb 2007
Posts: 2,358
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"Billy" wrote in message
...
In article ,
"FarmI" ask@itshall be given wrote:

"Billy" wrote in message
...
In article ,
"FarmI" ask@itshall be given wrote:

"Billy" wrote in message

When youčre down to only a few slugs, you can fall back on the
traditional organic control, which is to trap them with beer. Put an
inch or so of any beer in a cup, bury it in the garden nearly to the
rim, and collect your drowned slugs in the morning. Or, put some
beer
in
plastic drink bottles and lay them on their sides in the garden. The
slugs will crawl in and drown.

As I understand it, it's not drowning, it's the yeast. I'd always
thought
that the yeast acts as a poison for slugs and snails so you dont' need
huge
amounts of it. The dregs from the bottom of a bottle of beer that has
been
drunk is enough. I've never used a lot of beer and still the snails
have
died (and not whilst in the the liquid, but near it). Now you've got
me
wondering about what it is about the beer and yeast spreads that
works.

Do you mean the little "fun-guys", themselves, or chemicals that they
produce, like ethanol? Unlike Coopers, I'm not familiar with any USian
beers that are "krausened" (leaving yeast in the bottle).

I've never had good luck using beer on snails and slugs. Maybe it is
the
lack of yeast in the beer, or that most USian beer is so highly
processed, that our "refined" European snails may not recognize it as
beer. Micro-brewery beers, on the other hand, are too good, and too
expensive to put out for the marauding gangs of gastropods that used to
menace my garden.

I've seen very few slugs and snail this wet spring (19C and rain
today).
When I put a plant in the ground now, it is still there the next day,
not just a green stump where the plant used to be. This I attribute to
my reliance on ferric phosphate (iron phosphate) baits.


:-)) Perhaps you need to go buy some Vegemite or Marmite or Promite
:-)))))
If you don't like the taste of it on your toast, (and anyone with any
degree
of discernment, style and class will of course like it on their toast)
you
can use it on the gastropods.


What? It's better than Nuss Nuggat with raspberry jam on toast? I
already have enough habits, most of them are bad, but I await the
opportunity to give it a go ;O)


I'm sure we've all got a few habits we should give up.

I'm not sure what my formerly rampaging gangs of snails and slugs are
having for breakfast in that Gastropod Valhalla where they now reside.


I do hope there is a gardener there with large boots who likes nothing so
much as the satisfying crunch as the boot comes down on those soft slimy
bodies.

Saw your waterspouts on the telly, very impressive, WOW.


I just had to do a google. Very big and scary looking beasties. Wish those
selfish sods would send some decent rain in my direction - it always seems
to fall over the coastal cites these days. Sigh.