7 Ways to Deal With Slugs 

I have been searching for hours about slug control and you are the only one who comprehensively explained everything. Thank you. Slugs are killing my sunflowers :(

#6 "Give them a home". This method should always be included as it works as a gauge to assess the magnitude of the current slug problem and an indication of species involved. Good work done with this video BTW 😎

Hedgehogs have got brilliant memories. They even remember through hibernation! I feed them sunflower hearts and mealworms in the same place every night. I have about 6 hedgehogs now and last year they bought their babies to the feed bowls too.....

Great video, I do the night hunting thing but can't bring myself to chop them with scissors, so lob them into my neighbours chicken and duck pens instead which causes a riot as the birds do a far more gruesome job than the scissors fighting over the meat!!

Needing a lot of beer is a problem I have myself - and I don't even have a slug problem.

You made a very clear useful informative documentary about how to prevent vegetation from slugs. Your work changes the way I treats my small garden in Cambodia. Thanks you

As some others have said before, as an alternative to using beer you could do a very basic fermentation of water, sugar and yeast or maybe even substitute the sugar with some garden waste that is high in glucose so the yeast can eat. As opposed to spot traps you could get a large PVC pipe, cut it in half and run it down the middle of your crops (perpendicular to what appear to be your bedding rows) and fill it with the sugar yeast solution and flush it out once a month or so

I watched this video last year when I first took on an allotment. I didnt think I could see myself killing slugs, I just relocated them. One year on and the damage this year is so frustrating. I hunt them down daily and have a bucket of water to throw them in and put the lid on. I empty that into my compost pile weekly.

An opossum mom and her three kids moved to my garden but before I noticed that I was surprised not seeing anymore slugs and snails recently … now I know why 😆!

Really enjoyed this video. Thank you

Thanks for the multiple ideas. Will try few of them in my garden. Loved hearing your interesting accent.

OK, I am going to try the beer, the scissors, and the wooden board, yes, these slugs are getting to me now. I am not hesitant to get rid of them anymore. Thanks so much for your 7 tips.

Very informative, thank you!

Thanks, good stuff. Another possible addition to the armoury is a natural semi sheltered shallow pond which will attract frogs, an effective slug predator. Frogs also like the sheltered damp places frequented by slugs. You can chuck the slugs into the pond too - food for some small basic goldfish if you have them too. Hedgehogs can travel several km each night & they tend to have a regular route, or run, so although you don't see them every day/night they could still be helping out..

Great info, well presented with a smart, wide-awake perspective.

Thanks for the tip and you have a very nice looking garden

you are so cute!!! I love your different approaches, and NOT giving up!!! thanks for the great info :)

I used a frog one year that got trapped in the garden when I placed fencing around it and it worked pretty good with the slugs the frog got big at the end of the season

I’ve never heard better advice for slugs. Thanks! 👍 👍

Wow, I find this video so satisfying !

Great video I think the list videos do really well on youtube and this ones great. You have however put me off potatoes for life! :)) ;P

Yeast dissolved in warm water works as well as beer, for a fraction of cash.

Your farm looks incredible btw💚.

I really enjoy your videos.. Thanks for sharing your experience :)

This is my first year growing veg and really my first year taking the garden very serious so I’ve had a lot to learn and pretty much a war with slugs lol as I refused to use poison pellets. I have a small garden so a lot of container growing one method I have found to be effective was putting a ring of salt round and under the containers this method needs reapplied after rain etc but I found it to really block the slugs granted I combined it with beer traps and night hunts.

Thanks for making this video. I have some responses you might find useful: - Be careful with ducks, because they're curious and will peck everything just to try it. If they peck a legume stem, they've destroyed the whole plant. - Don't use beer-buy bread yeast in bulk and mix with sugar, then add to warm water to activate. It's the yeast and sugar they like-try it and see. I promise! - If you choose to use slug traps, put them at a set number of paces apart so you can easily track them under foliage - Use coffee grounds on the soil surface around expensive plants like Kale-slugs absolutely hate coffee. - And lastly, some of your potato damage might be wireworm. I found that maris piper was particularly bad for it (and slugs) I really recommend Charlotte for your second earlies (if only for yourself, because they're delicious), because wireworm don't seem so interested. If you ever have trouble with wireworm, give me a shout. Thanks for the vid and keep going!!

Your videos are always so interesting.

you are good at making captivating videos.

Very interesting. We recently found a creative solution for a single slug from our garden... not really helpful if you have more than 1 to deal with...but nonetheless my daughter who has a pet frog & the slug is its new terrarium mate & they seem quite happy together. 💚

I have now set up permanent homes for slugs, similar to your no.6, and have found it to be very effective: all my beds are sloped such that I can run thick planks of wood all along the back. As soon as there is something the slugs like growing in the bed, they congregate behind the nearest board, often dozens at a time. It's simple to pull the board out and snip their heads off. There are other advantages too: centipedes and beetles take up residence there, sometimes even frogs. Plus new slug arrivals eat the corpses instead of the plants, until my next sweep. I make sure I check the planks after a heavy rain, that's when they all move in.

Thank you for your tip...having problems with slugs and mole and squirrels on my garden now

These are all great! I will try some. I have a large garden but not close to the size of yours. I have been sprinkling salt around my plants and they have helped some. Actually they helped a lot

A primo slug trap is a half a cantaloupe that one has eaten the contents of. :)

I make toad houses , lots of toad houses .Also, collect toads and put them where needed. They feed at night too. ❤🇨🇦☕☕

Great video. Thanks for the useful tips 👍

Wow you have an enormous garden ! I have just begun trying the raspberry canes, still waiting to see the results. I think I will buy some cheap beer to seek any extra ones I've missed.

How can someone dislike this video?

*EVERY* gardener I've talked to in my farming area all use the same thing, Diatomaceous earth. They said it slices them open as they crawl across it on the dirt and they just decompose. It's totally natural and completely safe as it's just crushed shells, the shards are too small to hurt us, animals ... it just hurts creepy crawlies in the garden and has the added benefit of being good for your garden.

I have two allotments in north- east Scotland but don't have a big slug problem. I don't like killing things so I feed any slugs I see to my hens. I have also read that using scattered used coffee grounds act as a deterrent. I realise that this is not feasible on a bug scale such as the Red Gardens. This video is , as always, very helpful and informative. Thanks Bruce.

One of the best presented videos regardless to the interesting topic

lay wood chips everywhere you can around your gardens. It makes a great home for ground beetles which eat slug eggs but not crops. The very dry wood chips on top and uneven terrain makes it tougher for slugs to move. The woodchips settle and compact and the slugs dont actually live in the woodchips.

You missed the Big One. BUILD A POND This will attract Frogs and toads that will eat 100-plus slugs per evening

This is excellent. Thank you so much . I ready to tackle them now.

Amazing video that's great encouragement thanks a bunch!👨‍🌾👩‍🌾

P.S you forgot number 8. Lobbing them in the neighbours garden when no ones looking.

Tip six is the best I’ve done slug cleanups a few times in last twenty years tip six is best and fastest here in UK, with tip six it only takes a few minutes every day or other day

I have killed over 1900 slugs this summer at night with a torch and my fishing knife and they keep coming. Cutting the surrounding grass down low helps and I have in the past used 2 wires close together with a battery around raised beds and greenhouses and that has been the best repellent I have tried so far.

Timely! The current wet here, after the heat wave will no doubt bring out the slugs again. Over the few tears I have been hhere, I have gone through the same stages pretty much. Thanks for the reminders and the great video.

When you have a small garden, I recommend using mashed eggshell or mashed seashell. Just sprinkle it on the ground. They cut themselves on sharp edges and they do not like it. Btw, it is a very easy and cheap metod. Also, some flowers repel insects and slugs. Mostly fragrant flowers. I have some lavenders and it works quite wel. You can easily multiply them.

I have a small no-till hobby garden here in Iceland and have occasionally had slug problems. Not like yours, as the winters here are long enough to keep them down a bit (5 and half month growing season). I am also fortunate that I have a good population of predatory ground beetles which has been a real blessing (maybe your idea of laying down boards, killing the slugs, and leaving their remains in place might work to attract those beetles into your garden over time ???). Last winter I decided to try a thicker cover of old hay on top of a layer of compost. The hay layer was about 20 to 30 cm thick when I put it down and settled to about 10 to 15cm by planting time. This helps my worm population survive better as they are able to stay closer to the surface and closer to the compost layer that they feed on due to the hay insulating the soil against the cold. I have done thinner layers in the past and noticed then that the slugs' eggs would generally be between the soil and the hay. Last year with the thicker layer of hay, I found fewer eggs between the soil layer and the hay, and found fewer eggs overall, and most of those in the hay. With both the thinner and thicker layer method, when the snow finally melts I remove the hay and compost it. This allows sunlight to warm the soil again, though at this point it is still too cold to plant as there will generally be a few frosts after the initial thaw. Also, when the soil is newly exposed the birds come in and remove virtually all of the slug eggs remaining. Any eggs I do find, I simply spread out on top of the soil to attract the birds. ...note*...; Although birds can be a nuisance when the seedlings go in the ground as they tend to uproot a few with their scratching through the soil, I find that the garden still produces such an abundance that I can tolerate some plant loss. As to slugs in compost; Just hypothesising , but I believe the slugs only really survive close to the surface of the compost. The ones that get buried deeper simply die and become compost. When one scrapes off the surface layer of the finished compost and uses it to start the next batch, the overwhelming majority of the slugs end up in the new heap, only to be buried under the raw material added throughout the summer, or eaten by birds as they scratch through the new compost. Anyway, this seems to work in the Icelandic climate with a no-till garden. I don't know if anything I spoke of here is usable or adaptable to another climate, but I thought I'd mention it just in case. Thank you for your videos. I will continue to watch them and learn as I follow your progress.

Thanks for sharing!

You have a great looking garden..will definitely try some of these tips...I use thick layer of grated orange/lemon/lime peel for individual plants..seems to work.

I go out with a bright flashlight 15 minutes per night early in the season, and catch enough to keep the population down all year

Have you considered introducing lots of frogs into your garden? I do this and it is very effective.

Great video I used to go out night hunting with a torch and catapult so the slugs when caught I used to catapult them gardens away from mine but they if they are the same ones found there way back and this went on for some time until my garden was circled around the borders with slug pellets which helped imensly then one year digging my garden found a few slugs in the soil so then I stopped the gardening just kept it clean and tidy and a sprinkling of pellets. You could say the slugs won, but there are millions of them out there in eggs form just waiting to pounce on gardens.

Very useful thank you. I have been lucky this year but I am preparing for next seasons :)

Good advice, thanks. Do you know that you can use yeast and sugar instead of beer? Cheers

I use all the same methods as you, except the beer traps as I don't have space for them in my beds. I do however do a few things you don't: I never distribute complete heads of cauliflower, lettuce or calabrese, instead I always break them up and wash them first. My family prefers this as they get a big mix of different veggies for each meal, rather than being overwhelmed by one. Occasionally by special request I will do a single container of one type of veg for specific receipes. I also pre-wash all of my salads. I use nematodes on the leafy green beds, in April, July and September. I find they are only useful when I'm treating a relatively empty bed, so that I can get the nematodes deep into the soil. Since I rarely have all of my beds clear at the same time I split a nematode box and save some of them in the fridge. I also use slug pellets under a short piece of inverted gutter, this keeps them dry, I only use these in beds that have nets, so the birds/hedgehogs can't get to the dead slugs. I only use this technique in beds that have a lot of slugs, typically when I've cleared spinach or lettuce. I also throw a few slug pellets in the gap between my polytunnel wall and the raised beds I have in mine. Using these and your list of six techniques I have very few losses and in the thousands of salads I've eaten I've only - knowingly - had one slug in my mouth, but I noticed it straight away and it was soon in 'heaven'.

good video and lots of ways to get rid of slugs i was clearing over 100 a day now i use beer and there are a lot less to clear now

Another great video, I set my first beer traps yesterday. Let's hope the slugs are thirsty!

Just sprinkle table salt around the edge of your garden or around the wet covered areas. Salt is an instant slug kilker and is harmless to the garden when sprinkled away from plants.

I'm trying to establish a stable population of tiger slugs. They eat other slugs' eggs and also hunt other slugs actively. It's said they would not eat living plants at all which I cannot sign; they love small radishes for example (only the top of the root that sticks out of the ground) and mushrooms, also they damage other plants a little bit but do not cause any problems that way. Definitely way less than the Spanish slugs.

I shit u not 30 minutes ago I was thinking "huh I havent seen anything from red gardens in a while...". Good shit dude.

Great video man, keep it up

Was that a new composting setup? If so, will we get a video on it?

I'd rather drink the beer myself too, thanks.

Yeah bloody things .urrrg I'd be put of eating mushrooms cooked for life if I accidentally cooked one and discovered it on my plate a slug that is . Thanks for your ideas nice and straightforward. Looks a lovely market garden you've got there . I've subscribed so look forward to more subjects .good luck

Great info. What a helpful and Nice fella .

I collect all the slugs and snails to release them in the forest. There's no need to kill them cuz these bugs do benefit the environment.

Frogs, toads. I hardly see them in my gardens.

Funny you mentioned the beer method. Beer can also be used to eliminate roaches and mice. A study at Cornell University shows that mice show a distinct preference for imports, especially Michelob, as opposed to domestics. Your video is well done and informative, thank you for sharing.

Helpful. Thank you👍

Every morning at 4 am to 5 am Slogs roaming around I just put SALT into top their back and in second dead

I take slug hunting to the next level and pack a bug-assualt gun that shoots salt it's made for shooting flys it's awesome lol

excellent content . thank you sir

Bloody great video. I home brew beer and it can be done if just wanting to have a brew that is not drinkable but provides 100's of gallons if you want very cheaply ($20). Very cheap. Absolutely love your vid's mate. I have subscribe and from Australia

Ever though of doing voice over work?

The most effective method I found against slugs is store bought iron phosphate (called Slug-B-Gone) where I live. I'm curious what is RED Gardens opinion is on this method?

We found a good way to use slug pellets without causing a hazard to wildlife .used old butter containers with slots cut in the side and an elastic band to keep the lid on .Slug pellets are a bait so the slugs crawl in through the slots eat the pellets and die inside the tubs .It worked really well.

Thanks, will try the give them a home method!

He has a lot of space, he should just get ducks! They'll eat all the slugs :)

A pond for frogs maybe?

5:26 The best method I assume. I will deffo try this.

Super helpful video. Do you have any suggestions agains aphids in a small garden?

Have you considered a bird house? XDD

Let a flock of ducks roam in the garden.

excellent video

Best RU-vid channel ever

Diatomaceous earth. Boom.

You need ducks, chickens would damage crops to much.

I'm on a much smaller scale and am going to cover my raised beds with netting. I'll check the beds each morning and night for snails/slugs.

I've been thinking about making a small, shaded pond from a concrete mixing tub to encourage frogs and toads to hang out in my vegetable garden. A solar bubbler and some goldfish should keep it healthy. The slugs and various caterpillars that our hopping friends eat are probably the most damaging pests I have, (other than the groundhog who always gets the lowest hanging tomatoes.) Plus, seeing frogs and toads always makes me happy!

Excellent video

My son LOVES it!

Thanks! This year I harvested 100s of strawberries, but the same amount got nibled by slugs. My lettuce were gone 4 days after planting them. Going to try tip 6.

Thanks for sharing

I had a small cabbage patch I. Built a solid wood wall around it a foot high. I then attached 2 or 3 strips of smooth edge which is used for putting down carpet. It has dozens of tiny tacks on it at an angle slugs will not climb over it out it on before slug season keep grasses mowed near wall works great !

Brutal tips

I can vouch for the beer method. 2 years ago I have killed about 2000 giant slugs (some up to 15cm) with cheap beer in 2 nights. I used 2.5L plastic bottles cut in half lengthwise with a scissor. It kind of spreads when you pour beer in it but they don't seem to need much depth to drown. By morning all of them were filled with dead slugs. I filled a small bucket in 2 days. My chickens got a nice treat of beer soaked slugs. Now I am planning to get a couple of Indian runner ducks. They say those are the most effective against them and they are also very good egg layers.

I used the iron phosphate pellets and those have had a good effect. I must disclaim that I have a balcony and not a patch of land so it's easier to apply the pellets