Wednesday, August 14, 2013

Beer cups for slugs




The telltale signs of slugs began appearing in the garden mid-June: holes in the leaves and slime trails around the base of the plants.  We inspect the plants every other day and usually pull off a few slugs, squashing them between rocks.  This is not a particularly pleasant task for us, nor the slugs I would guess, and not great for time/labor efficiency. So we're trying a tip passed on by Mike's dad: beer cups.











Place beer in small cups around the garden.  I placed them pretty close to the base of plants.












Here's the cup a few days later.  The things that look like koi fish in a pond are beer bloated, very dead slugs.













As you can see, the beer lured a bounty of slugs and other insects.

  As far as organic pest control goes I think beer cups for slugs is a real winner.  Be warned though, after a few days the cups, now full of stale beer, dead insects, and whatever compost/manure fell in with the bugs, are certainly rank.  Even so this method is far superior to squashing slugs individually and who wouldn't prefer the hazy death of a booze soaked coma to the inglorious smear of one's guts between two rocks?



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