When you see those mucus lines in the garden, you know your plants were under attack last night. Fun Fact: Well, not so fun is that snails and slugs eat with a jaw and a flexible band of thousands of microscopic teeth called a radula. The radula scrapes up, or rasps, food particles, and the jaw cuts off larger pieces of food, like a leaf, to be rasped by the radula.

They have a whopping 14,000 teeth. Slugs can eat up to double their body weight in a single night. They can consume around 40 times their weight in a single day.

While one or two slugs or snails may not seem like much, populations can increase quickly. Slugs and snails mate but have both male and female reproductive organs. That means every slug or snail can lay eggs.

Common snails may lay up to six egg batches annually, with as many as 80 eggs per batch. Some slugs lay up to 500 eggs annually, which mature in three to six months and start laying eggs themselves. Left unchecked, that’s hundreds of new pests each year, multiplied by every slug or snail in your garden.

A tried and true method of killing off slugs and snails in the garden is to bait them with a cup or tray of beer. They love it. They will make their way to beer, fall into the liquid, and die what we hope is a rather pleasant death. Slugs and snails are attracted to the yeasty, fermented odor of beer and even prefer it to the fresh smell of your growing plants.

If you don’t have access to beer or would simply rather concoct your own substitute, here’s a formula that works just as well. Mix these ingredients and pour the liquid into your traps.  You can add a touch of honey, and these measurements don’t need to be exact:

• 1 tablespoon (15 ml.) yeast
• 1 tablespoon (15 ml.) flour
• 1 tablespoon (15 ml.) sugar
• 1 cup (237 ml.) water

You can use tuna tins or yogurt containers as the traps

Method when using a beer tin

• Pour the beer into a container
• Cut the beer tin in half
• Fold the top few cm over and back into the tin to create a lip.  This will prevent the slugs and snails from getting out
• Fill the trap halfway with beer
• Place the trap in the garden where you see the mucus trail or slug and snail damage

Follow this link to view how we made the traps

Live and let live is a fine philosophy, and we know that working with nature as closely as possible yields the best results against pests. Some seasons, the slug and snail population is simply out of control. This is when a simple homemade beer trap will make short work of the slimy attackers without the chemical and ecological risks of pellets.

Happy Gardening Friends

Tash and Family