this is the best thing you have ever written, Goldy.

Try Sluggo on those motherfuckers! It's non-toxic, works and the only evidence left of the motherfuckers is a blob resembling a gecko turd.

http://www.pestproducts.com/sluggo.htm

Please don't waste the beer!

I want to barf.

Yay, I asked Goldy to write a gardening column and he did! Boo, he made me want to barf on a slug.

Thanks Goldy!

Amen

The brown and black garden slugs are an invasive species from Europe, anyway. They are weeds in animal form.

I like to shoot them with a BB gun. A nice, prone position, straight on shot to the forehead basically turns 'em inside out. It's fucking awesome.

Kill 'Em All, Goldy!! Avenge my zuchinni!

I have some Sluggo, and hoping it works.

I wonder if this 9 volt battery electric-anti-slug-fence would hold up out in the rain.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ZdeyWuHb…

But I guess a strip of copper would work just as well?

I <3 this column, but I do have to say that @4 is right - Sluggo is a (relatively) safe and non-toxic option that is quite effective and much less labor-intensive.

I usually employ a bit of Sluggo and a bit of Goldy's total war strategy, myself.

Another endorsement for a combination of Sluggo and hand-to-hand combat. Drop a Sluggo pellet in front of a slug and watch it eat it like candy. I have found the slugs have to be a certain size to eat the Sluggo pellets, but you can always just squish the baby slugs.

I am sick and tired of these motherfucking slugs in this motherfucking plot!

(I had to.)

Rat lungworm is found in Southeast Asia, with a couple cases seen in the Caribbean, according to a quick search of the CDC website. There's no mention of it in the WA Department of Health website, which leads me to conclude that it hasn't been diagnosed and reported here, but the pathogenic species is expanding its range, according to the CDC, with infected rats arriving in container ships. And we do a lot of trading with Southeast Asia, so...

Haha, were the hell is so-called vegan commenter Ipso Facto on this one?

Even though computers contain animal products, so no one who is a vegan should ever be posting on a forum...

Get a duck. Sheesh.
They're like non-stop, Terminator-style, laser-beams-attached-to-their-frickin'-heads, kickass, genocidal maniacs when it comes to slugs.

Sick! Vivid! Win!

That's exactly what my organic gardener mom's method was when we were growing up, except she used a garden hoe to cut the slugs in half with glee.

Do wear shoes, though. It is a particularly gross feeling getting slug parts between your toes.

Goldy, did you see this video?
http://mynorthwest.com/382/675454/Garden…

Slug Fizz:
One part clear ammonia, three to four parts water. Use a pump up sprayer and mist everything for a couple nights in a row. It dissolves the slugs just like salt does, but simply adds nitrogen to the soil. The reason this works is because ammonia is a base, so I don't why people would vinegar or other acids. (Throwing fine limestone in the air until everything looks powdered also discourages the little bastards).

The Slug Fizz is safe to spray directly onto most plants, but as with anything, test it one a small sample first.

Apparently the jury is still out on whether invertebrates feel pain. It's an interesting topic of debate.

I generally have a soft spot for all things that wriggle, even if they're eating my lettuce, so I use beer traps. (Really, compared with being cut in half, or fried with chemicals, or ripped apart by a bird, drowning in beer doesn't sound like that bad a way to go.)

Of course, I've been lucky enough to have never had a really serious slug infestation. Perhaps if I did, I would upgrade from sissy-pants beer traps to Goldy's reign of terror method.

Try diatomaceous earth, you commie idiot.

Is it any wonder the communist nations tend to have a starvation problem.

Apophallation is a commonly seen practice among many slugs. In apophallating species, the penis curls like a corkscrew and during mating often becomes entangled in the mate's genitalia. Apophallation allows the slugs to separate themselves by one or both of the slugs chewing off the other's penis. Once its penis has been removed, the slug is still able to mate using only the female parts of its reproductive system.

-wiki article on slugs

@22 Diatomaceous earth doesn't work very well on slugs, plus it's ineffective when wet (so basically it's useless during exactly the times when slugs are the most active). Don't get your panties in a knot.

PU-LIT-ZER! PU-LIT-ZER! PU-LIT-ZER! What a great article! I laugh just thinking about it.

Why not just put down hazelnut shells? You can buy a 40-pound bag of hazelnut shells from your local farmer's market for $25. Slugs can't crawl over it. I've never had a single slug or snail. The hazelnut shells are attractive, and the left-over nuts inside even attract friendly birds.

Or you could toothpick them!

@11 not likely - I believe that once the copper corrodes it doesn't work any more against slugs. Don't quote me on that though. I have used a very thin strip of copper attached to the top of a cardboard strip under the eaves and it worked fine though. Usually only to protect important seedlings until they're over 4 inches tall and strong enough to avoid slug damage. I don't really have problems with slugs though, since I don't plant all my greens in one place. They usually kill one or two plants each year, not a big deal.

@22 Diotamaceous earth only lasts until it gets rained on. Not very effective against things that like to come out after rains.

@16 Hell yeah, ducks are great for that. I should buy my brother a duck, he traps 20 slugs a day in 'slug season'

Amusing article though, I like that about this paper. Here in Vancouver (BC) we only have poor copies of the Stranger.

As for wasting beer, I wonder if they would go for other, cheaper, more easily fermented options?

What about ash? My organic-gardening-magic-mother used to make a ring around the perimeter of susceptible greens and it seemed to work okay.... Then again, we did do a lot of the "snip-and-let-die" technique.

p.s. pardon the hyphens

p.p.s kudos on this article Goldy, that was fookin' funny (yet so apropos).

I also like to attack them when they think they are safely hiding from me. Leave a board or some other type of slug shelter out near the garden for the ones you missed during the night. Then each morning go out, turn the board over, and squish the fuckers.