writes:
Mannnnnnny thanks for your interesting and prompt response.

Thanks a bunch.

However would prefer not to use pellets as I would not wish anything
similar
to happen to me.

Use beer, Budweiser is the best. Yeast water is also supposed to work,
but I've had much better luck when I've spent the bucks on Bud. I hate to
kill things but figure they die happy; they're drunk, after all, right?

I save some pop cans to distribute 1/4 can of beer about the garden
during the gardening year, then drop the entire can (usually with several
slugs in the garbage can). Winter time, my chickens take care of them
very well, leaving very few behind to invade anything during the growing
season. This year, I didn't put anything out for the slugs and saw very
few signs of any. Just now, some very little ones are showing up here and
there, but sooooo are the chickens!

Glenna

However would prefer not to use pellets as I would not wish anything
similar
to happen to me.

Hand pick the slugs, drop them into a plastic bag, and then put them in the
freezer. The next day, pull the bag out and discard. They have a peaceful,
frozen death.

Best time for hand-picking -- a rainy morning after the sun's come up. We'll
have plenty of those in the coming months.


--
Warm Regards,

Claire Petersky
please substitute yahoo for mousepotato to reply
Home of the meditative cyclist:
http://home.earthlink.net/~cpetersky/Welcome.htm
Personal page: http://www.geocities.com/cpetersky/
See the books I've set free at: http://bookcrossing.com/referral/Cpetersky

Glenna Rose wrote:

writes:
Mannnnnnny thanks for your interesting and prompt response.

Thanks a bunch.

However would prefer not to use pellets as I would not wish anything
similar
to happen to me.

Use beer, Budweiser is the best. Yeast water is also supposed to work,
but I've had much better luck when I've spent the bucks on Bud. I hate to
kill things but figure they die happy; they're drunk, after all, right?

Here's an odd suggestion or three.

1) Place your beer bait OUTSIDE the garden in a perimeter. If you place it
inside the garden, then slugs from outside will arrive faster than the
locals can be dispatched. Instead, draw the locals outside to greet the new
arrivals with a welcoming beer bash.

2) I'll get flambed to a fair thee well over this, but I have found
scattering a pretty heavy application of fresh, ground coffee over the
grounds at the first sign of damage / slime trails to be nearly 100%
effective. NOT used grounds, fresh ones. Slugs come out to 'smell the
coffee'. Once.

3) We all gotta go sometime and there are very few pleasant exits. The fact
is that if there are not enough natural predators, the slug population will
grow to match the available vegetation. Plus 10%. The second fact is that,
due to their nocturnal habits, slugs effectively have few natural
predators. If you don't want to try the coffee extermination route or the
constant upkeep of the beer bait route and you don't want to lay down
Sluggo, look for anti-slug products using ferrous gluconate as their active
ingredient. It breaks down to an organic fertilizer. And so do slugs.

I don't wanna fight Paghat, but I sure wouldn't turn to her (a Wiccan) for
help understanding the scriptures.

Bill

In article , Bill
wrote:

Glenna Rose wrote:

writes:
Mannnnnnny thanks for your interesting and prompt response.

Thanks a bunch.

However would prefer not to use pellets as I would not wish anything
similar
to happen to me.

Use beer, Budweiser is the best. Yeast water is also supposed to work,
but I've had much better luck when I've spent the bucks on Bud. I hate to
kill things but figure they die happy; they're drunk, after all, right?

Here's an odd suggestion or three.

1) Place your beer bait OUTSIDE the garden in a perimeter. If you place it
inside the garden, then slugs from outside will arrive faster than the
locals can be dispatched. Instead, draw the locals outside to greet the new
arrivals with a welcoming beer bash.

2) I'll get flambed to a fair thee well over this, but I have found
scattering a pretty heavy application of fresh, ground coffee over the
grounds at the first sign of damage / slime trails to be nearly 100%
effective. NOT used grounds, fresh ones. Slugs come out to 'smell the
coffee'. Once.

3) We all gotta go sometime and there are very few pleasant exits. The fact
is that if there are not enough natural predators, the slug population will
grow to match the available vegetation. Plus 10%. The second fact is that,
due to their nocturnal habits, slugs effectively have few natural
predators. If you don't want to try the coffee extermination route or the
constant upkeep of the beer bait route and you don't want to lay down
Sluggo, look for anti-slug products using ferrous gluconate as their active
ingredient. It breaks down to an organic fertilizer. And so do slugs.

I don't wanna fight Paghat, but I sure wouldn't turn to her (a Wiccan) for
help understanding the scriptures.

Bill

Me a wiccan? And why that non sequitur at all if you weren't just trolling
for attention?? My dad was a nonobservant Jew & my step-mom a Buddhist
bikuni from Thailand, & my primary religious influences were Buddhist; I
am personally agnostic but was in youth very actively buddhist. I've
studied comparative religion for decades & know scriptures of many sorts
exceedingly well; these wonderful texts are better than science fiction.
Since my greatest interest is in ancient to medieval religious texts, that
pretty much leaves out wicca, a modern invention despite wiccan claims to
the contrary. But to overlook your trolling me, & to adhere to the topic,
here're some slug facts which may improve your slug advice in the futu

Beer doesn't really kill slugs. There is a possibility of DROWNING slugs
in beer, as in water or tomato juice or Welch's grape juice, but nothing
special about the beer. Field studies show the majority of slugs crawl
into it, then right out, unharmed, especially if the beer is in a shallow
container like in a pie tin in which drowning is not possible. A few slugs
might on rare occasions be killed by the alcohol content but that
evaporates off in about an hour, & unless the beer is put out at night,
the alcohol will already have evaporated before the slugs begin to be
active.

Slugs can only drown if the water (or beer or Martinelli's sparkling apple
juice or Uncle's Billy's urine) is deeper than their "foot" can reach them
back out of the container. If a Yoplay yogurt cup (with inward-reaching
walls) is sunk partly in the ground (not all the way or beneficial insects
will fall in) slugs might occasionally crawl into it after the scent of
the beer malt, & can't crawl back out, so might drown though the beer
itself was harmless to them. It wouldn't work very well even in this
context, since slugs can't smell stale beer, so unless the beer were
changed AT LEAST once a night if not more often, it would have no more of
an attractive odor than any random liquid.

Slugs have favorite beers. A study at the University of Colorado
discovered slugs dislike some beers & just won't pay attention to them.
They did indeed rather like Michelob & Budweiser. They were MOST enamored
of
Kingsbury Malt, which is not alcoholic. The Colorado study used DEEP
"professional" slug traps that drowned slugs. A University of Ohio study
used shall beer traps with "lids" for the sake of population & species
studies. Fresh beer was used as an attractant which in no way harmed the
slugs. The "hide box" beer traps attracted a lot of slugs, which liked the
beer enough to hang out in the trap (clinging to the trap roof) for easy
count & species assessment. Essentially beer in a hide-habitat made them
happy rather than dead.

Even more adamantly, coffee grounds do not kill slugs, that's one of the
newer garden myths.

Here's the complete skinny on the slugs & coffeegrounds urban legend:
http://www.paghat.com/coffeeslugs.html

Sluggo & other Iron phosphate snail & slug baits definitely do work.
They're the only baits that work with anything approaching reliability, &
the only baits legitimately non-toxic except to molluscs.

She this discussion of Iron phosphate as the best method of slug control
other than hand-picking them at night with flashlight in hand:
http://www.paghat.com/slugcontrol.html

-paghat the ratgirl

--
"Of what are you afraid, my child?" inquired the kindly teacher.
"Oh, sir! The flowers, they are wild," replied the timid creature.
-from Peter Newell's "Wild Flowers"
Visit the Garden of Paghat the Ratgirl: http://www.paghat.com


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