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?
