Slugs and snails are frequent backyard pests that may trigger injury to a variety of vegetation, from greens and fruits to flowers and decorative vegetation. They voraciously feed on the tender leaves, buds, fruits, and stems, abandoning holes and discolored patches. A big infestation can completely devastate your backyard.
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Snail and Slug Fundamentals
Slugs and snails aren’t bugs; they’re soft-bodied mollusks. The primary distinction between slugs and snails is that the latter have a shell which is made largely of calcium carbonate, like egg shells.
Additionally referred to as gastropods, which suggests “stomach-foot”, snails and slugs journey on one “foot”, and go away a tell-tale path of shiny, slimy mucus wherever they go. In actual fact, it’s the presence of this slime that may assist you to distinguish slug and snail injury from that attributable to different pests.
Slugs and snails are hermaphroditic, which means every particular person has each female and male reproductive organs. This implies they can reproduce rapidly and prolifically, and because of this do a number of injury when you don’t management their populations.
One of the best strategy to slug and snail management is to make use of an built-in mixture of cultural, bodily and organic strategies collectively. Listed here are 13 totally different strategies that can assist you management slugs and snails naturally in your backyard.
Cultural Controls
The best way you domesticate and preserve your backyard can have a huge impact on stopping pest populations.
Scale back Slug and Snail Habitat
Slugs and snails feed primarily at night time, so through the day they disguise in moist, darkish locations below leaves, pots, planters, thick groundcovers like ivy and ice plant, and mulch. To make your backyard much less slug-friendly, you have to to both scale back and take away their hiding locations, or use them as a entice (See under):
- Transfer soggy leaf or straw mulch away out of your vegetation as quickly as they arrive up within the Spring. Wait to mulch once more till early summer time when the soil and air is drier.
- Take away useless or broken leaves out of your vegetation year-round to encourage good air circulation and take away hiding locations, particularly across the root zone.
- Within the fall, clear up backyard particles and transfer it far out of your backyard beds to make it harder for slugs to put eggs and overwinter.
- Put away your unused pots, planks of wooden, and different backyard muddle that would present hiding locations for slugs, snails and their eggs.
Water Within the Morning
One of the best ways to assist forestall slug and snail injury is to maintain plant and soil surfaces as dry as attainable in a single day. All the time water very early within the morning somewhat than within the night, so surfaces are dry by the tip of the day.
Keep away from overhead watering, as moist leaves are extra weak to wreck from slugs and snails in addition to from fungal illness. In areas with excessive rainfall or humidity, give vegetation additional area within the backyard to advertise good air circulation.
One of the best follow is to change to drip irrigation on a timer. This does three actually good issues to your backyard. Drip irrigation:
- saves water by irrigating immediately on the root zone, by any mulch, saving you water and cash. With a timer in your system, you possibly can water at dawn with out even getting off the bed!
- eliminates overhead watering, which reduces moist foliage, stopping pests and illness
- vastly reduces the period of time that the bottom is moist, which makes your backyard far much less liveable for moisture-loving pests like snails and slugs.
Select Slug Resistant Crops
Leaves with tender, delicate leaves and fruits are usually slug magnets, together with basil, beans, cabbage, dahlia, delphinium, hosta, lettuce, marigolds, strawberries, and small seedlings of all types.
Leaves which are thick, leathery, bushy or waxy resist their assaults, as do vegetation which are very fragrant. The place you possibly can, select vegetation that slugs don’t look after, like cyclamen, ferns, geraniums, lavender, nasturtiums, poppies, rhodededrons, rosemary, or sage.
Use Companion Planting
Some fragrant vegetation, akin to rosemary, chamomile, chives, and garlic naturally repel slugs and snails. Planting these kind of vegetation close to or round different vegetation which are vulnerable to slug and snail injury will help to discourage them, in case your downside is gentle.
Different vegetation are very enticing to snails and slugs, and will be planted subsequent to the backyard to distract and entice them. Good entice crops for slugs embody chervil, marigold, and thyme. Mix entice crops with handpicking to successfully management reasonable slug and snail populations.
Bodily Controls
Handpicking
One of the vital primary and efficient strategies of controlling slugs and snails is by merely hand-picking them out of your vegetation. That is greatest achieved at night time when the pests are most lively. Use a flashlight or blacklight round their hiding locations and favourite locations to feed and it is possible for you to to identify them and their slime trails. (You’ll be able to typically accumulate caterpillars, hornworms and different pests extra simply at night time, too!)
Utilizing gloves (to keep away from the slime), choose off and drop any pests you discover right into a bucket of soapy water to kill them, or preserve them in a closed container to feed to your chickens, geese, or opossums. Alternatively, you can harvest garden snails to eat yourself! Snails and slugs have a pure homing intuition, so when you don’t destroy them, you’ll have to take them very far out of your yard, or they’ll simply come again.
Handpicking for a number of nights in a row will vastly scale back pest populations. As soon as the inhabitants has noticeably declined, weekly hand-picking needs to be enough.
Backyard Cloches
Cloches are small plastic or glass domes that go over particular person vegetation to guard them from backyard pests in addition to from frost. They’re nice at guarding small seedlings in opposition to slugs and snails, in addition to birds, squirrels and rabbits, as a result of the pests can not crawl up and over them.
Needless to say backyard cloches are like mini greenhouses, and they also create additional warmth and condensation round your vegetation. Be sure that to raise them off or keep away from utilizing them on sizzling days, so that you don’t overheat your vegetation.
You should buy pre-made cloches, or make your individual DIY cloches from repurposed plastic 2-liter bottles or milk jugs with the bottoms reduce off and the caps eliminated.
Wooden Traps
As a result of snails and slugs like to cover in cool, darkish, moist locations through the day, you possibly can entice these pests beneath board traps or flower pots that you simply place all through your yard.
You’ll be able to construct board traps by elevating 12- by 15-inch boards (or any easy-to-handle measurement piece of scrap wooden) off the bottom with 1-inch runners on two sides, like a really low desk. The runners elevate the board simply excessive sufficient for slugs and snails to crawl beneath. Be sure that each the board traps and the soil are good and moist if you lay them down.
Carry boards each day and scrape off any snails and slugs you discover. Destroy them away out of your backyard in a bucket of soapy water, feed them to your chickens, or harvest them for dinner. (see Handpicking).
Bread Dough Traps
Latest research from Oregon State University has discovered probably the most profitable attractant for slugs is bread dough. Affiliate professor Rory McDonnell stated, “They actually, actually prefer it. Bread dough outperformed every thing.” In a single occasion, over 18,000 snails had been trapped in 48 hours.
You may make bread dough utilizing the researcher’s recipe and hand-pick the slugs from the dough, or flip it right into a slurry to draw the slugs who then drown within the liquid.
Bread Dough Slug and Snail Entice
This “bread dough” recipe is irresistible to slugs and snails, making it tremendous simple to entice and take away them out of your backyard.
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Combine collectively the flour, water and packet of yeast. Knead right into a dough for handpicking traps, or add extra water as wanted to make a slurry for drowning traps.
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Put your dough or slurry into ready-made slug and snail traps you should purchase at backyard provide shops, or make your individual out of a mason jar or massive, plastic yogurt container with a number of snail-size holes reduce into the lid.
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Bury the entice on the sting of your backyard in order that the opening of the entice is degree with the highest of the soil. That approach, slugs and snails can fall simply into it.
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Verify the container each morning and take away slugs. Maintain your slurry or dough moist and refreshed for greatest outcomes.
Beer Traps
Slugs and snails are drawn to the yeast in beer as a lot as in bread dough, so inserting a number of small bowls of low cost, yeasty beer as traps on the sides of your backyard will be an efficient option to management a small pest inhabitants.
As a result of each bread dough and beer are so enticing, you need to place your traps on the sides of your backyard beds, in order to attract the slugs and snails away from your tender vegetation.
Your entice should be deep sufficient to drown them, and have vertical sides to maintain them from crawling out. Additionally, you will want a lid of some type to scale back evaporation and stop rain dilution.
Make sure to bury the traps in order that they’re almost degree with the soil, and alter the beer each few days to keep up its effectiveness.
You should buy ready-made slug and snail traps at backyard provide shops, or you can also make your individual by burying a mason jar, small bowl, or massive, plastic yogurt container so the rim is at floor degree, and inserting a lid with one or two snail-size holes reduce into it over the container.
Where to find slug/snail traps.
Diatomaceous Earth (DE)
Diatomaceous earth (DE) is a pure powder constituted of the fossilized stays of tiny aquatic organisms referred to as diatoms that slugs and snails (and most hard-shelled bugs) discover troublesome and dessicating to crawl by.
Obstacles of dry diatomaceous earth heaped in a band 1 inch excessive and three inches broad round your vegetation have been proven to be efficient at deterring slugs, in addition to earwigs, mites, ants, fleas, capsule bugs and different pests which have an exoskeleton.
Nevertheless, diatomaceous earth loses all effectiveness as a pest management the second it turns into moist, making it impractical as a slug barrier in most backyard conditions. Nevertheless, it really works nice as a non-toxic pest management mud utilized immediately on infestations of aphids, ants, fleas, and many others. each within the backyard and round your own home.
Where to find food-grade diatomaceous earth.
Organic Controls
Encourage Pure Predators
Frogs, toads, snakes, birds, raccoons, opossums, turtles, geese, and even chickens will eat slugs, snails and their eggs. Most terrestrial snail species make nice escargot! Encourage pure predators by giving them habitat, like a small pond or water characteristic in your yard, or a small log and brush pile in a secluded or distant portion of your property.
You can even let your geese or chickens unfastened in your backyard or orchard to make fast work of slugs and snails there, in case your vegetation are massive sufficient to deal with pecking and hopping round them.
Use Helpful Nematodes
Nematodes are a category of tiny, helpful worms that may be utilized to the soil to regulate many forms of pests. They are usually voracious predators for his or her particular prey of selection, and make fast work of any that are available contact with them. Every species of nematode assaults totally different species of pests, so you will need to select the appropriate nematodes for the job you want them to do. The nematode varieties referred to as Phasmarhabditis hermaphrodita and Phasmarhabditis californica, particularly, kill slugs and snails. They’re the one types of nematode which are confirmed to take action.
Nematodes are utilized to your soil by mixing them in water and making use of them to your backyard beds or planters in response to instructions on the package deal. As a result of they’re residing creatures, after you purchase them, they’ll must be saved in a darkish container within the fridge, and used rapidly.
Slug-killing nematodes will be bought from gardening provide shops in Europe, however aren’t but obtainable within the U.S. (Though many different species of pest-control nematodes can be found within the U.S.)
Where to find slug-killing beneficial nematodes in Europe.
Chemical Controls
Chemical controls for snails and slugs will be efficient when used together with an built-in pest administration program that comes with the opposite strategies mentioned above. Baits alone will not successfully management snails or slugs in the long run.
Copper Obstacles
Slugs and snails expertise an uncomfortable chemical response to their slime touching copper, so copper boundaries will be an efficient option to deter them—although they have an inclination to work higher in small purposes like potted vegetation, somewhat than massive backyard beds. Right here’s tips on how to greatest use them:
- Make protecting collars to your seedlings by wrapping them with a strip of 2-sided copper tape or flashing that’s not less than 3 inches broad so you possibly can bury a portion of it 1 or 2 inches under the soil to forestall pests from crawling beneath the barrier.
- Nail or glue 2-inch broad copper foil or tape across the base of your pots and patio containers. Make sure to take away any pests current within the soil earlier than making use of the barrier, so that you don’t undermine your efforts.
- Defend your timber by wrapping a 4-inch broad band of copper foil or mesh across the trunk, permitting for an 8-inch overlap across the trunk. Staple one finish into the trunk, then join the opposite finish to itself with paper clips that may enable the copper band to slip outward and develop because the trunk grows.
To be efficient in opposition to slugs and snails, copper boundaries must be not less than 2 inches broad, and made with a excessive share of copper. Most copper tapes offered at backyard facilities are too slender and too low in copper to be very efficient, so search for thicker, wider copper tapes which are particularly made for shielding electrical guitars and different electronics.
Copper boundaries are efficient till they develop into tarnished. After they do tarnish (which can fluctuate based mostly in your area and local weather), you possibly can clear them with a vinegar resolution.
Where to find high-quality copper tape.
Iron Phosphate Bait
Iron phosphate bait pellets—obtainable below many model names, together with Sluggo and Slug Magic—will trigger snails and slugs to cease consuming, nevertheless it will possibly take a number of days to per week for the snails to die.
Iron phosphate is a pure mineral, and due to this fact it’s acceptable to be used in natural farming. Nevertheless, iron-based slug pellets aren’t utterly non-toxic to different animals. These pellets can kill earthworms and hurt animals or those that ingest massive portions of them, so preserve the package deal locked away from youngsters, pets, and compost bins. However iron phosphate slug pellets are nonetheless a a lot safer different to metaldehyde slug baits.
Sprinkle snail bait pellets over the backyard soil, close to, however not on vegetation which are enticing to them, or close to their favourite hiding locations, akin to below planters and irrigation bins, near partitions and fences, or different moist, protected areas.
Apply the bait within the late afternoon or night to reap the benefits of the nighttime feeding habits of those pests. Making use of bait repeatedly in the identical areas is greatest, as a result of snails and slugs are likely to return to meals supply websites.
Gentle watering after utility helps these pellets to work higher, as a result of it encourages snails and slugs to forage. Nevertheless, don’t water closely after bait placement, since you may bury the pellets in soil, wash them away, or make them moldy.
Where to find iron phosphate slug pellets.
AVOID: Metaldehyde Bait
Slug and snail baits containing the lively ingredient metaldehyde are simple to search out in backyard facilities, and they’re extremely efficient. Nevertheless, metaldehyde baits are toxic, notably to canine and cats, and the pelleted kind will be very enticing to canine. Some metaldehyde merchandise are formulated with “carbaryl”, which is poisonous to earthworms and soil-inhabiting helpful bugs.
Metaldehyde isn’t accepted for natural farming. Don’t use metaldehyde snail baits the place youngsters and pets may encounter them. Keep away from getting metaldehyde bait on vegetation, particularly fruit and veggies.
AVOID: Salt or Ammonia
Each slugs and snails will be killed very successfully by both sprinkling them with salt or spraying them with an ammonia resolution. However these chemical compounds additionally kill vegetation and soil life fairly readily, and so they can accumulate in your soil, so they don’t seem to be beneficial for slug and snail management within the yard and backyard, or close to storm drains, creeks, lakes, rivers or different waterways.
What Doesn’t Work to Management Snails – Widespread Myths
Opposite to common backyard folklore, crushed egg shells, espresso grounds, wooden ash, pine needles, shredded bark mulch and wool pellets have all been tested and shown to be ineffective at deterring slugs and snails.
In actual fact, some experiments show that snails and slugs don’t appear to thoughts espresso grounds or egg shells one bit. And since calcium is a vital a part of a snail’s weight loss program (to keep up their shell), they might really be drawn to egg shells!
Put your espresso grounds, wooden ash, and egg shells to higher use in your compost bin. Pine needles, shredded bark and wool pellets make excellent mulches, however don’t rely on them for slug management.
