One of the nastiest things an outdoor gardener can discover is that slugs have oozed their way into his patch overnight, fed to their gooey heart’s content, and left their slime all over his produce. Hideous. Makes you run for the saltshaker!

There are, fortunately, lots of ways to deter them, and none require harming the environment (minus, of course, the slug itself).

• Slugs are natural drunks. Leave out wide, shallow cups of beer for them to drink themselves to death in.

• Copper delivers a shock to slugs! Make use of that penny jar and ring your garden with them. The slugs won’t get killed (unfortunately), but it will deter them from even the tastiest of your produce.

• Although slugs can crawl unharmed over razor blades, they tend not to seek out rough and scratchy terrain. Lining your garden with lava rocks, sharp gravel, coarse sand and other irritants will help keep them foraging elsewhere.

• A ring of iron phosphate around your garden will kill scores of marauding slugs - they eat it and die in a day or two. However, this might also be passing the lethal ingredient onto whatever predator might subsequently eat the slug after it’s ingested the stuff, so beware. I also don’t know what effect this stuff might have on the environment, though it does occur in nature.

• Plant stuff the slugs don’t like. Here’s a partial list:

Ajuga (bugleweed), Alchemilla mollis (lady’s mantle), Alyssum, Arabis, Armeria (thrift), Artemisia, Anemone (fall-blooming types), Aquilegia (columbine), Astilbe, Astrantia (masterwort), Aubretia, Bergenia, Crocosmia, Dianthus, Euphorbia, Ferns, Fuchsia, Geranium (cranesbill), Grasses (ornamental types), Helleborus (hellebore), Hemerocallis (daylily), Heuchera (coral bells), Hydrangea, Iris,
Lavandula (lavender), Narcissus (daffodil), Paeonia (peony), Pelargonium (annual geranium), Penstemon, Phlox, Potentilla, Rosa (rose), Sedum, Tulipa (tulip), Vinca (Vinca minor, V. major)

Plants that Slugs Don’t Like [gardeners.com]

(image: winecountrydivas.com)