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Old February 6, 2018   #6
gardenmermaid
Tomatovillian™
 
Join Date: Feb 2013
Location: In the snowy desert of SE Idaho
Posts: 111
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I don't use chemicals in my garden. I have used beer traps, which are fairly effective, in the past, but with overhead sprinklers they had to be reset daily.
But then I switched to Back to Eden style gardening (no-till, heavy mulching with shredded trees). The first year I had lots of slugs and pill-bugs. I did nothing about them. The second year, fewer bugs, and then last year, my third year of this style gardening, I saw a few slugs and other bugs on dead plant parts such as pulled weeds or trimmings, but they left my healthy plants alone. The only time I found them on healthy plants was when, for instance, a strawberry had a bird bite, then the slugs would come and finish the job. My lettuce and other plants were left alone!
One other way I dealt with slugs in the past was to make traps and then kill them. Hollowed out mini watermelon rinds or orange rinds layed on the ground to make a cool "cave" for the slugs to hangs out, then check the traps every day and flick any slugs or snails into a bucket of soapy water.
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