Slugs

Apparently (my research of the morning has told me) Britain is the slug capital of the world, and this year is going to be especially bad because of all the warm weather rain.

Based on my morning genocides in my garden, it seems that my house is where all the slugs meet up in the morning before being despatched out to the rest of the UK...

So... anybody have good solutions?

I've gone through a bottle of slug repellant, can't put out pellets because of idiotic pets, haven't had any luck with beer traps, and am now resorting to salting them. I'm looking for the cheapest effective solution (I don't have money to sow my garden with nematodes).

I don't usually try to kill them outright.. I just put loads of crushed eggshells around the food plants.  Salt is cheap, though.

I've tried the eggshells and coffee grounds, without much luck.

Slug pellets are the only thing I've found that works well and there are brands that claim to be 'pet safe' (not sure how true this is but judging from the lack of dead cats in my garden they can't be that bad!)

no helpful solutions but EEWW    sorry, just had to say that

Beer. Apparently slugs like to drown themselves in beer. 

copper tape and rimming the rims of pots with Vaseline.

fingers crossed, but so far, so good.

i get them in my kitchen all the time, dont know where they are coming in? maybe from the drain in the sink. salt will kill them but man that is wrong to do that to them...

Trade you slugs for my local squirrel(s)...

I would happily make that exchange!!

I just got back from going to two stores looking for something that will work and doesn't leave chunks of anything (which may not hurt my pets, but they certainly will eat them), and that can be used on food plants. No luck. Did find some copper strips, but it was going to be too expensive and not everything they're eating is in planters.

There's no sentimentality when it comes to slugs. They ate through several of my plants, and one attached itself to one of our cats.

If only I had a hedgehog... apparently they're the absolute best slug killers.

Believe me, I hate slugs too! But I once had a squirrel build a nest in one of my big pots...with the chewed-off carcasses of the rest of my plants!

So far here they've limited themselves to digging--the plants have been ok, but I have serious doubts about how my seeds will do after all the disturbance.

But a slug on your cat...that's just wrong.

Do my grans method.  Water your garden and the patio and path, Get a torch and go outside at 10pm ish at night and hack them in two with a mini garden spade! Eewwwe grim! or pour sea salt on them or around the edges of your pot plants...makes them dry up and die.

I can sympathise.  Slugs eat all the best stuff in our garden too.  I've put salt around the pots, but of course that won't work for stuff that's in the ground.  Beer traps are a joke.  Even my animal-loving kids finally turned against the slugs (they still protect snails) when they found our guinea pig cage crowded with slugs one day and our poor guinea pig running and popcorning frantically all over.  We now keep our guinea cage ringed with salt at all times but last summer the salt got rained away and had to be replaced almost every day!

I finally followed my in-laws advice.  They said to go out with a torch/flashlight late at night and carry a bucket of salt water.  Use rubber gloves to pick up every slug and toss them in the bucket.  We caught billions of them and our problem did get better.  Unfortunately, you have to do it night after night and frankly I can't keep that up.  I'm able to convice my kids to do it sometimes though, and they're even better at getting them than me.

No advice, just sympathy. We've had them in the bathtub! One was even cheeky enough to be on my shampoo bottle. 

We've got a massive slug issue in our back garden. I just bought something called a SlugX - google it and you'll find several places that sell it. I haven't had it long, but it seems to work reasonably well. It's a bit gross to clean out though - you fill it with beer and they crawl in and get trapped/drown and you empty it and refill it every day or two. I also just figured out that my Sainsburys has a shelf of damaged goods that are marked way down and they often have single cans of beer, so that helps the cost of having to tip out a can of beer every few days!

OMG! I have the same problem. Only I live on the 5th floor!!! So how are these little buggers getting up there? I see them come out after it's rained on my balcony. gross!