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Our summer has been rather wet so slugs have been more of a problem. Slugs do help to decompose organic matter in the soil so I don’t mind a few but if they destroy plants or vegetables they have to move to another garden! You don’t need toxic chemicals to rid your garden of slugs. There are many natural methods that work!

One of the easiest ways to keep slugs away from your plants is to have a tidy yard and garden. If they don’t have dead vegetation or places to hide they are less likely to stay around.

Here are several methods to try in your yard and gardens

Barriers. Slugs are soft-bodied and do not like to get scratched. Surround susceptible plants with rinsed, crushed eggshells – slugs will not crawl over them, and they are good for the soil.

I have used soot or ashes. They add nutrients to the soil so they also have a positive benefit to the garden area.

You could also use Diatomaceous Earth, also known as DE, which is ground up marine fossils. This can usually be found in available at good garden centers, online or in gardening catalogs. This will need to be replaced after heavy rains.

In the most popular area for slugs in my yard, the front garden, I use 4 inch copper strips placed in a ring around the base of the plant. The slugs get a “shock” from the copper.

Trapping is another method of slug control. The old tried and true beer trap is somewhat effective: place beer in a shallow dish and bury at soil level where slugs are active. Personally I don’t like this method, I find the pan gets spilled to easy. But I have friends who think this is the best slug control.

Another trap is to leave the rind of 1/2 a grapefruit, orange, or small melon out in a moist spot overnight. The slugs will hide under the rind during the day so you can pick up the rind and dispose of all the slugs underneath. If you have any groundhog or small rodent problems do not use this method.

You can also lay down small wooden boards, which the slugs will hide under. This has worked well for me. I use a few baords as walkways and just check under the boards occasionally.

Toads, snakes and certain birds love to eat slugs. Having these creatures in you yard will greatly reduce your slug population. I place toad houses in my gardens to encourage these friendly creatures to live in my garden. They add fun and laughter to your garden.

With a little care you do not need to use chemicals in your gardens. Chemicals harm good insects and birds so I try to avoid using them.

Tags: organic pest control, control slugs naturally, chemical free gardening

By keeping my plants healthy, watered and weed free I can usually control pests. But once in a while I have a pest problem or my neighbors ask for a pest control that is more organic than the store bought chemical products.

The recipe below is close to being organic and works well. I originally saw this in Organic Gardening and tried it. It works well.

4 cloves of garlic
1 small onion
1 small jalapeno pepper
1 tsp. of Murphy’s oil soap
1 tsp. of vegetable oil
1 gallon Warm Water

1. Crush the Garlic, Onion, and Pepper in a blender. Add to 1 quart of warm water and let soak for 2 hrs.
2. Strain the mixture through an old pair of pantyhose into a gallon jug. Add rest of ingredients and fill rest of jug with warm water.
3. Shake mixture and add to a hand held sprayer.

The pests do not like the onion, jalapeno and garlic and they will move on. The Murphy’s oil soap and vegetable oil help the spray to stay on the plants. This spray will not harm plants. I try not to use it when bees are pollinating the plants.

I myself have not used this spray in several years. My pest problem is almost non-existent and I can hand pick any bugs easily.

When I was young we would go up on the neighbors back pasture and pick wild black raspberries. The fields had a barbwire fence that separated two pasture and rocks lined the fence lines. We would find out which side the cows were on and pick on the opposite side. We had many hours of fun plus the berries were great.

The berries were used for shortcake or made into a jam. As a matter of fact my first jam I made was when I was 8 years old and it was black raspberry.

When we first moved to my grandfathers farm there were black raspberries growing by the barn. I tried to clear them out but they were persistent and I finally gave up. Then I remembered picking them as a child and decided to straighten up the area a bit and make them easier to pick

I started by mowing around the patch to make picking easier and to discourage rabbits for eating the berry canes. It’s now a circular patch as that’s what it wanted to be. Why fight it? I mowed a path though the center and then cross ways. I usually place rooted sawdust or leaf mold on the paths. This makes it easier to mow, maintain and pick the fruit. The ground cover also feeds the soil and the plants. This year I added some posts so that I can get the canes to grow up and not have them hang on the ground.

I pretty much ignore the patch. I will cut out dead canes and am teaching the canes to grow up. I add a little manure in the fall and other than that the plants fend for their selves. This little patch supplies about twenty quarts of berries. I make fresh jam, jelly and freeze some for in the winter. And once in a while I will even make a pie.

If you are looking for wild black raspberries look around old pasture lines, where the woods meet an open filed or old farms. Just make sure to ask the property owners if you can pick the berries.

Its fun to harvest wild fruit and for me it brings back memories of hot summer days and trips to the pastures to harvest berries.

Tags: foraging for wild berries, black raspberries