Eleven Ways to Get Rid of Slugs and Snails

1: In per­ma­cul­ture we say, “Got too many snails? You don’t have enough ducks.” Slugs and snails are great food for ducks and chick­ens, much bet­ter than the processed food at most feed stores. The ducks and chick­ens are all over them in sec­onds. I per­son­al­ly am very fond of ducks, and good man­nered ducks can come into my gar­den any­time and look for snails and slugs. Chick­ens are inter­est­ing too. I have been told they have a lan­guage of 100 sounds, and I imi­tate their lan­guage back to them. I like to let the chick­ens in the gar­den in the late after­noon. They go for the slugs, snails and bugs, but are ready to leave for the coop at dusk before they dig up the garden.

2: Beer traps work great for catch­ing slugs. Place a saucer of cheap beer on the ground. The slugs are attract­ed to the odor of the beer, crawl in for a drink, and drown. Do sev­er­al times, and soon all the slugs will be gone. Don’t let the beer become dilut­ed with over­head sprin­klers or rain.

3: Non-tox­ic, food grade Diatoma­ceous Earth (Insect Dust) is very effec­tive for slugs. Diatoma­ceous Earth is fos­silized shells of tiny water-dwelling organ­isms. When ground up, they have micro­scop­i­cal­ly fine, sharp edges. It is applied by sprin­kling around gar­den beds or indi­vid­ual plants, or mixed with water to make a foliar spray. It is a fine pow­dery dust and can be irri­tat­ing to the lungs and eyes, so read the appli­ca­tion direc­tions. Diatoma­ceous earth is less effec­tive when wet, so use it dur­ing our dry Mediter­ranean sum­mers. Don’t buy the D.E. used in swim­ming pools. Non tox­ic food grade D.E. is avail­able local­ly and by mail order at Peace­ful Valley. 

4: Set half an orange or grape­fruit rind round side up or over­turned flow­er­pot or a board on the ground in the gar­den. Wet it good, and leave it overnight. Slugs gath­er under­neath. This can be a hit-or-miss method, but it some­times works real­ly well. 

5: Encour­age slug preda­tors like birds and toads. Robins love slugs. Throw some slugs to your favorite birds, and they will keep an eye out for more. Attract toads with an upside down bro­ken clay pot in a shady spot.

6: Water­ing strat­e­gy. Slugs are most active at night, or when the ground is moist and they can trav­el eas­i­er. Change your water­ing sched­ule to water in the morn­ing so the soil or mulch is dried out by evening, which report­ed­ly can reduce the chances of dam­age by snails and slugs up to 80%.

7: Sea­weed is a good soil amend­ment and a nat­ur­al repel­lent for slugs. If you have access to sea­weed, mulch with it around the base of plants or perime­ter of bed. Sea­weed is salty and slugs avoid salt. Push the sea­weed away from plant stems so it’s not in direct con­tact. Dur­ing hot weath­er, sea­weed will dry and become very rough which also deters the slugs. Don’t put lots of sea­weed on already salty alka­line soil.

8: Cof­fee grounds. Anoth­er cheap and good way to get rid of slugs is by sprin­kling cof­fee grounds around your gar­den, espe­cial­ly around plants that are more attrac­tive to snails and gar­den slugs. The grounds will dry out in the sun, and these crit­ters don’t like to crawl over them. Using a wide, shal­low strip of cof­fee is best. How­ev­er, hor­ti­cul­tur­al side effects of using strong grounds such as espres­so on the gar­den are uncer­tain. When using cof­fee grounds, mod­er­a­tion is advised.

9: Sprin­kle crushed egg shells around vul­ner­a­ble plants. Slugs and snails will avoid cross­ing the sharp shells and it will enrich your soil with calcium.

10: Anoth­er dis­like of snails is sand, which they do not like to cross. Put a band of fine sand about ¼” high (1cm) high around the gar­den edge or base of plants.

11: Seri­ous slug con­trol: gath­er 1/2 cup of slugs, 2 cups of water and a cou­ple cloves of gar­lic. Blend, and spray on plants. The extra mix­ture can be frozen for lat­er use.

If you have oth­er good for the earth ways to get rid of slugs and snails, I’d love to hear about them.
Send me an e‑mail or face­book me.

How to eat snails: cap­ture the round snails and place in a box or bas­ket full of fine­ly ground non-gmo corn. After sev­er­al days, the snails guts will be cleaned out. They can be boiled and dipped in but­ter or coconut oil. Buen provecho!

By the the way, the long skin­ny snails pre­date on the round snails.

Enough!

What to Do with Wood Ash from Woodstoves and Fireplaces

From one of my Per­ma­cul­ture Con­sul­ta­tion clients

Dear Cathe’,

It was great to vis­it with you yes­ter­day. I have a ques­tion. We have been col­lect­ing ash­es from Kath­leen’s fire­place in a large trash­can in the garage. I was won­der­ing about using them in the green­house or gar­den. Do you know of any uses for wood ash? What do you think about putting ash in the compost?

Love, Kather­ine

Hi, Kather­ine,

Take wood ash from wood stove or fire­place in a met­al buck­et. Nev­er store in plas­tic until ash is absolute­ly cool. This way you avoid burn­ing down buildings.

Use only high qual­i­ty wood ash. No ash­es from BBQ grills, card­board, ply­wood, paint­ed, or pres­sure treat­ed wood. Hard­wood ash (oak) is supe­ri­or to soft wood (pine) ash.

Three Caveats
1. DO NOT USE ASH IF YOUR SOIL HAS AN ALKALINE pH of 7.5 or high­er. It will make the soil too alka­line or salty. Alka­line soils are found in low rain­fall areas in the West. Use wood ash only in loca­tions where soils are acidic, like for­est soils and moun­tain soils, or places where there is ade­quate rain­fall in the warm sea­son .…not in alka­line soils like the desert. If in doubt, con­tact your local Mas­ter Gar­den­ers http://www.ahs.org/master_gardeners/

If you have been farm­ing or gar­den­ing with chem­i­cals, check your soil pH. Most chem­i­cals increase the pH and will even­tu­al­ly salt the soil

On the pH scale, 7 is neu­tral like pure water, below 7 is acidic with 1 being the most acidic like bat­tery acid; and above 7 is alka­line with 14 being the most alka­line like liq­uid drain clean­er. Nor­mal gar­den soil is typ­i­cal­ly 5.5 to 7.5 pH. Wood ash is typ­i­cal­ly 10.4 pH

2. Don’t use wood ash near these and oth­er acid lovers: aza­leas, rhodo­den­drons, blue­ber­ries, mums, marigolds, moun­tain lau­rel, oak, pecan, and sweet potato

pla 3. Sprin­kle wood ash before plants emerge, in win­ter or very ear­ly spring. Don’t plant seeds or seedlings until at least two weeks after ash has been applied, or wait until new plants are a few weeks old to spread it. The small­er they are, the more dra­mat­i­cal­ly plants may react to the sud­den increase in pH.

Wood ash has the same com­po­si­tion as lime­stone. Use it where you would use lime. If you put a pile of wood ash out­side, and it rains, it will turn to limestone.

The secret to using wood ash is to SPRINKLE IT or DUST IT.

Use wood ash­es to:

1. Spread fine­ly on the soil on your prop­er­ty. Use a large cof­fee can or a box with nail holes punched into the bot­tom. Spread so it looks like fine baby pow­der on the soil.

2. Enrich com­post. Enhance com­post nutri­ents by sprin­kling in a few ash­es so it looks like a fine pow­der. Adding too much, though, ruins compost.

3. Com­post­ing cit­rus rinds. In a buck­et of wood ash, place rinds of cit­rus or any­thing that is hard to break­down. Make sure to cov­er the bucket.

4. Cal­ci­um lov­ing plants. For cal­ci­um-lov­ing plants like toma­toes, sprin­kle and spread out ¼ to 1/8 cup (NOT MORE) right in the hole when plant­i­ng. More is not bet­ter. It should look like a pow­dered baby’s butt.

5. Block gar­den pests. Spread even­ly around gar­den beds, ash repels slugs and snails.

6. Con­trol pond algae. One table­spoon per 1,000 gal­lons adds enough potas­si­um to strength­en oth­er aquat­ic plants that com­pete with algae, slow­ing its growth.

7. De-skunk pets. A hand­ful rubbed on your dog’s coat neu­tral­izes that famil­iar lin­ger­ing odor.

8. Hide stains on paving. This Old House tech­ni­cal edi­tor Mark Pow­ers absorbs wet paint spat­ters on cement by sprin­kling ash direct­ly on the spot; it blends in with a scuff of his boot,

9. Clean glass fire­place doors. A damp sponge dipped in the dust scrubs away sooty residue.

10. Make soap. Soak­ing ash­es in water makes lye, which can be mixed with ani­mal fat and then boiled to pro­duce soap. Salt makes it hard­en as it cools.

11. Shine sil­ver. A paste of ash and water makes a non­tox­ic met­al polisher.

12. Kill moss in the lawn. Sprin­kle light­ly over lawns that have moss problems.

13. Tooth­paste. In the old days before tooth paste, ash was used to clean teeth. The poten­tial bio-haz­ards in the mod­ern world are the chem­i­cals used in fire starters, newsprint, and mag­a­zine inks. Using bak­ing soda instead tastes much bet­ter and is a com­mon practice.

14. Clean­ing white boards. Ash­es are good for clean­ing white boards that have been marked by grease pen­cil or mark­er. It even works on per­ma­nent mark­er that has been mis-applied to a white board.

15. Melt ice. My per­son­al all time favorite. Keep con­tain­er of ash­es in car (or on the porch for side­walks) in the icy sea­son to add trac­tion and de-ice with­out hurt­ing soil or con­crete under­neath. In Alas­ka, we car­ried a shoe box of fine screened ash to get vehi­cles out of ice. Sprin­kle hand­ful of ash­es out about a foot in front of the tires that have pow­er (4 wheel dri­ve ‑all tires; front wheel dri­ve ‑front tires; rear wheel dri­ve- rear tires). Dri­ve right out of trou­ble as if you were on dry pave­ment. Elim­i­nates the use of salt for icy sidewalks.

Check out the com­po­si­tion of ele­ments in wood ash, below, from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Georgia.

Hope this gives you some ideas for what to do with all that wood ash from our unusu­al­ly long and cold winter,

Cathe’

Com­po­si­tion of Ele­ments in Wood Ash Mean and (Range) tak­en from analy­sis of 37 ash samples

Macro ele­ments in aver­age %, range of 37 sam­ples, highest %

Cal­ci­um 15 (2.5–33) 31 Potas­si­um 2.6 (0.1–13) 0.13 Alu­minum 1.6 (0.5–3.2) 0.25 Mag­ne­sium 1.0 (0.1–2.5) 5.1 Iron 0.84 (0.2–2.1) 0.29 Phos­pho­rus 0.53 (0.1–1.4) 0.06 Man­ganese 0.41 (0–1.3) 0.05 Sodi­um 0.19 (0–0.54) 0.07 Nitro­gen 0.15 (0.02–0.77) 0.01

Micro ele­ments or Trace Min­er­als in mg, range of 37 samples

Arsenic 6 (3–10) Boron 123 (14–290) . Cad­mi­um 3 (0.2–26) 0.7 Chromi­um 57 (7–368) 6.0 Cop­per 70 (37–207) 10 Lead 65 (16–137) 55 Mer­cury 1.9 (0–5) . Molyb­de­num 19 (0–123) . Nick­el 20 (0–63) 20 Sele­ni­um 0.9 (0–11) . Zinc 233 (35–1250) 113

Oth­er Chem­i­cal Properties

CaCO3 Equiv­a­lent 43% (22–92%) 100% pH 10.4 (9–13.5) 9.9

% Total solids 75 (31–100) 100