Kill your slugs with milk
Posted by Fiona Nevile in Discoveries, General care | 21 comments
I am working in Saffron Walden at the moment in my friend Anna’s new house. It doesn’t have a fridge. A pint of milk doesn’t last more than a day. Two days ago Anna cleared the kitchen of various dead milk containers and put them on the terrace outside. One container was a transparent plastic cup, half filled with stale milk.
The next day I was having a break in the garden and spotted that a lot of tiny curled things were in the cup. Initially I assumed that her little girls had put a handful of gravel in it. But something rang the Slug Killer alarm bell. I picked it up the cup, swirled and peered. Anna had inadvertently created a slug trap. The cup was full of small snails and slugs. All satisfyingly dead.
That morning I tootled into the green house and found that my 24 tobacco plants that I have nurtured for seven weeks had been chomped. Only the base of the stalks remained. Enraged, I examined my watercress plants.
The pots in the greenhouse were clear. These are waiting to be delivered to friends. My pot stands outside the greenhouse, in the shade in a washing up bowl of water. There were two slugs asleep on the surface of my pot. A lot of the tenderest tips were sheared off and the slugs were dormant beside these tips. They had fallen asleep with food on the table. I tossed the slugs into the chicken run.
Driving down to Essex I pondered the slug question. I am not keen on using slug pellets. I’ve resentfully tried beer traps (why should slugs be enjoying our great beer?) and daily teach slugs what life as a circus cannon ball would be like. Using a firm swing they sail through the air with ease. This is satisfying but I know that by they time I return home they will have trekked their way back to my seedlings. Anna’s Milk Trap was a joyous discovery.
This morning I was on tenterhooks when I arrived at Anna’s house. I shot into the garden. The cup was now full of slugs and pretty foul milk. Finally I had found a practical answer to our slug problem. I rushed indoors and announced my discovery. The building team acknowledged my discovery with a brief nod before the ceiling that they were manipulating crashed down with a dusty elongated thud.
Feeling like an undiscovered Einstein I returned home and switched on the laptop to check my findings on the Internet. I discovered that slug haters have already discovered My Discovery.
I found a great site, that deals with every sort of slug killing idea or device.
http://www.cat.org.uk/ihateslugs/bugtheslug.tmpl?startat=31&endat=40&subdir=catpubs&key=TR
A must for anyone who has decided to grow vegetables but has found that they have opened a well reviewed, Michelin starred Slug Restaurant. Now I am going to offer a glass of milk, as an aperitif. A cheap, easy and effective way of distracting slugs from my precious seedlings.
Leave a reply
How do I stop slugs coming into the house and leaving their silver trails on the mat in the kitchen or even in the lounge? Have laid pellets and salt to no avail. Help!
Hi Tamfish
Your comment made me smile. I throw live ones that I find to the chickens and guinea fowl – they love them.
How to kill slugs:
Have a really bad day at the office,
Water all plants on your return,
Wait till dark,
Go out side armed with torch and kebab skewer, Collect slugs and snails on kebab skewer (as if you were picking litter,
If you are a little squemish pretend your boss/co worker is a slug!, (not that hard i’m sure).
And remember if you don’t get them they will happily munch on your flowers and veggies, its kill or be killed.
Hi Elaine, so pleased that you enjoyed this post. The prospect of bears puts slugs into perspective in an instant ):
I really enjoyed the slug trevails by Anna’s friend in Saffron Walden. Even if I didn’t have annual battles with those creepy critters, I would have got a kick out of your story, it being so entertaining. Thanks for sharing.
I am use to using both beer and snail bait so another solution is always welcome.
Now I just need some natural solutions for rabbits, groundhogs and deer. We were delighted to have a black bear in our yard yesterday but no solution is necessary for that big guy. He was lost plus the noise of a nearby highway was probably frightening. He appeared later in the day to the hugh distress of our dog who desperately tried to get out the door. It was last seen heading toward the creek bank with it’s shallow water & hopefully going the right direction..
Strange how with all this wildlife around us, the concern is geared more toward what can’t be seen!
Die slugs die!
What a great tip. We’ve been getting through so much beer (well atleast the slugs have) and we forgot the newly planted rocket and they’ve had most of that!! Milk it is. Thanks
Hi Joanna, when I first moved to the cottage, my mum employed an ex SAS soldier with a rifle to kill the rabbit that was living in the garden at the time. He would arrive at dawn. The rabbit evaded the one man death squad and now lives in the next door garden. Trapped in there when they renewed their fences.
Hi Sara, I think that it’s stale milk that works the best. Probably your cats would turn up their noses at that. The Min Pins like milk but haven™t drunk the stale stuff in the traps
Thanks for the milk tip. I’ll try this if I can manage to stop my five cats from drinking the milk!!!!!
Sara from farmingfriends
Brilliant. Do you have any ideas for keeping the rabbits at bay???
Joanna
joannasfood.blogspot.com
That’s a fine idea! We don’t drink and I baulked a bit at buying Heineken for the slugs when we don’t drink it ourselves, but milk is always available in our household. I also wanted to feed them to the chickens, but worried that if they were embalmed in beer they might adversely affect the chooks. This way they’ll just be a milky, if somewhat dead treat 🙂