How to Rid Your Garden of Slugs in Three Easy Steps

As everyone with a garden knows, slugs are a pesky problem that can maim and destroy your beautiful and delicious plants. They eat their way through leaves and vegetables, making even the toughest plant look like a sad lump of Swiss cheese. You don't have to suffer this problem in silence, however. There are several great ways in which to rid your garden of slugs forever.

Garden Prep

The best way to get rid of slugs is to try to keep them from showing up at all. Because they're attracted to moist ground and areas and only show up at night, water your plants in the morning. That way they're moist throughout the day, as the sun's rays are at their hottest. When the snails come out at night, they find only dry ground. Then, rid yourself of any standing water (such as empty pots) in the area.

Booze It

Interestingly enough, the use of beer is one of the oldest and most successful methods in getting rid of slugs. Either dig a shallow hole in the ground and place a cup filled three-fourths of the way with your favorite brew inside or leave shallow containers of it on top of the ground. The barley and yeast in beer attracts slugs like honey to flies and they will soon drown themselves in your container. Simply check your cups every day, emptying the slugs and refilling the beers as necessary. Just don't accidentally forget what's inside and take a sip!

Borders

Some of the best methods in repelling slugs is to create borders around your garden. Two of the best such borders are sand and copper stripping. The sand's grainy texture has the tendency to rip snails open when they try to slide across, so a ring of that around your plants is a great deterrent. If you don't want to actually kill the slugs, placing copper stripping around the garden area is a more expensive way to go. The slugs are actually repelled from the copper and refuse to cross it. Just make sure that, when you lay the copper border, that there are no slugs already inside its bounds, as they will be trapped inside, eating the plants to their hearts' content.

All of these methods are great and easy ways in which to rid your garden of slugs. Use one of any combination of the three and you're sure to be rid of your pesky problem forever!