Ugh … slugs!

Slugs. They are the bane of a gardener’s existence. The sweetest, would-not-hurt-a-fly gardener will gleefully crush the soft, slimy bodies of these ugly, plant devouring monsters.

The best way to kill slugs depends on two factors. The first being how much work you would like to invest in eradicating slugs from your garden. The second is how much suffering you would like the slugs to go through.

The Salt Method – This is an age old and particularly gruesome method of killing slugs. It requires a fair amount of effort though. Basically, you go out in your garden in the dark of night, armed with a flashlight and a salt shaker. Search your plants that have had tell-tale holes eaten into them. Find the slugs, and as you find them, pluck them off the plant and shake just a tad bit of salt on them. The salt will draw the water out of the slug and it will die.

The Beer Method – This is a kind hearted killers way of disposing of slugs, but it is pretty labor free. All you do is leave a shallow dish of beer out in the part of your garden where you are having a slug problem. The next morning, you will awake to either a very drunk raccoon or a dish filled with dead slugs. Your chances of finding a dish of dead slugs is higher, but a drunk raccoon is amusing in its own right.

The Melon Method – This is another low effort method you can try whenever you have a melon to eat. Eat the flesh out of the melon. Then leave the hollowed out rind turned melon side down in the garden with a pebble under the edge to prop it up a bit (think Wile E. Coyote Road Runner trap). Leave overnight. In the morning, the underside of the rind will be covered with slugs that you can kill at your leisure. This method works particularly well if you have a resident raccoon hanging about. The raccoon will most likely find the slug filled melon rind before you do and will help himself to a healthy breakfast of melon flavored slugs. Yum.

The Diatomaceous Earth Method – If you thought that using salt to suck the water out of the slugs body was a delightfully cruel way to kill them, wait to you get a load of diatomaceous earth. Sprinkle this stuff over the slug infested area, and it will shred the body of the slug as it crawls over it, which ultimately kills it. Diatomaceous earth is like a powdered Cuisinart! How fun is that?

The Plain Old Squishing Method – Well, in the end, there is something to be said for just squishing slugs as you find them. It is pretty gross, but is wonderfully satisfying.