How to Get Rid of Snails and Slugs in the Garden

Snails and slugs can ravage your garden and turn your precious plants into spindly sticks almost overnight. To protect your plants, it’s important to get rid of these pests as soon as you spot them.

Infestations of snails or slugs can be devastating for gardeners. Depending on where one lives, both slugs and snails can become a nuisance as they dine on garden plants, causing unsightly holes in foliage, stems and roots. Essentially both are considered mollusks, and since they can multiply quickly by laying eggs, they can overpopulate a garden within a single growing season.

Snails and slugs eat organic matter. Sadly for gardeners, they enjoy both living plants and decaying plants. They tend to be attracted toward plants with thick or succulent leaves and dine on fruit such as tomatoes and strawberries.

Like deer or rabbits, snails and slugs often make the top ten lists of garden pests. While there are dozens of home remedies and myths about eliminating them from our gardens, the truth is that the best if not only way to reduce their damage is to stop them before they do any serious destruction. Keep reading for a few proven methods to try.

Bait and Lures

Organic Chemical Baits

Iron Phosphate Pellets – Often sold as Slug Bait, Iron Phosphate pellets are organic work but only to a point. While safe to use around children and pets, the pellets can take seven days to a few weeks to kill a slug or snail after one consumes it. Some brands of these pellets contain other ingredients such as a weak insecticide like Spinosad, but it is added not to kill slugs or snails but to affect other garden pests that are insects.

Ferric Sodium – The products that contain Ferric Sodium work in much the same way that Iron Phosphate does, but Ferric Sodium it isn’t considered quite organic by many countries. However, Ferric Sodium kills these pests slightly quicker, in about half the time than Iron Phosphate (4-6 days).

Inorganic Chemical Baits

Products that contain metaldehyde are proven to work, often killing both snails and slugs within a few hours, but they are not organic and are toxic if not poisonous if ingested. Use caution around children and pets if you choose to use such baits. Always read and follow the manufacturer’s directions carefully as when and how you use them greatly affects their efficacy. Typically such baits are set out near evening when slugs and snails are more active, and they work best during hot and dry weather, not when temperatures are cold or in heavy rain.

Natural Methods of Elimination

Eliminating Conditions, they Love – Snails and slugs need places to hide and love the undersides of boards, stones, and large flower pots that sit on the ground. While eliminating every hiding plant is impossible, reducing such places as shelters is generally a good first step.

Tape Barriers – Many people insist that barriers that snails and slugs don’t like are an effective way to keep them off of plants, but proceed carefully as copper tape (which presumably emits a low electrical charge that these pests don’t like) can work against you. Copper tape placed around a raised bed might achieve just the opposite effect – trapping the pests within the bed and not outside of it. Also, each plant will need a barrier which is often unpractical. Under the right, controlled conditions, however, copper bands do work.

Other barriers – Clever systems also work, but aren’t always practical. Setting a potted plant elevated above a pan of water will also work, as slugs and snails cannot swim. This may only be useful if you have just a few potted plants, however.

Pans of Beer – While beer baits are a famous trick, the truth is that they do work – to a point. A pie plate with beer poured in it will often attract slugs due to the yeasty scent, but catching a handful of snails or slugs in a garden is often not that effective, and the pans can attract other pests.

Diatomaceous Earth – The use of diatomaceous earth (microscopically sharp natural product) is effective, its use might be impractical for many as bands must be comprised of a totally dry medium and applied at least 1 -3 inched high around a plant. Once damp or wet, the medium loses its effectiveness.

Hand Picking – As disgusting as it may be, many gardeners know that hand-picking slugs and snails and destroying them is often very effective. Wear latex gloves and head out into the garden at night with a flashlight for the greatest success. Drop the victims into a bucket of soapy water and then dispose of them.Plants that Deter or Repel them.

New Biological Controls – New studies are finding that a new predatory snail known as Decollate Snail (Rumina decollata) in known to effectively control some snails species on farms and in orchards. However, its use is still under scrutiny as it can affect native snail populations. Always check with local officials to see if you live in such an area.

Methods that Don’t work – Some myths and methods popular on social media in eliminating slugs and snails have little to no data behind their efficacy. These include the use of Crushed Eggshells Coffee Grounds and no plants proven to repel them.