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HOME REMEDIES TO KILL SLUGS Warning! Do not Drive Or Operate Heavy Machinery After Preparing This Remedy. Drink 1 or 2 cans or bottles of beer leaving a large swallow in each one. Place containers on ground
in areas where you are seeing them and leave for 24 hours. Slugs will crawl into the containers, drink the beer and become
intoxicated and trapped inside. Discard cans in garbage. Please do not recycle these cans.
Spread non toxic DIATOMACEOUS EARTH in gardens and other areas where you are seeing the slugs.
How To Get Rid Of Garden Slugs Baits containing the molluscicide metaldehyde give good control and may be used in home vegetable and flower
gardens, around ornamentals and in greenhouses and lath houses. The baits are applied to the soil surface, not directly on
the plants. It is often better to put out baits before the plants are up or transplants set out as the slug is more likely
to find and feed on baits when other food is not readily available.
SLUGGO
DAMAGE THEY CAN DO
Slugs and are often present in greenhouses throughout the year and in home vegetable gardens, flower and ornamental borders
during most of the summer. Injury to plants consists of chewed holes in leaves, stems, flowers and fruit. Seedlings may be
totally destroyed.
A BRIEF DESCRIPTION
Garden Slugs and are molluscs, a group of invertebrate animals with soft unsegmented bodies. Garden Slugs are often described
as snails without a shell, while snails bodies are enclosed in calcareous shells. They move along by secreting a path of mucus.
LIFE HISTORY
Many species overwinter in the egg stage, but slug eggs may also be found at other times of the year. Slug eggs resemble
little round spheres, are whitish to clear in color, and are often found in masses just below the soil surface. The young
slugs resemble the slug adults and begin feeding as soon as they hatch. The life span for most species is usually less than
one year.
Immature and adult garden slugs that overwinter become active in the early spring when temperatures are consistently above
40 degrees F (5 degrees C). A wet spring and early summer usually result in a buildup of garden slug populations. Dry weather
is often detrimental to slugs, and they may either die or burrow deeper into the soil to await moist conditions. Cool damp
fall weather is conducive to much garden slug injury.
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Garden Slugs are active mostly at
night, and the slime trail they leave is an indication of their presence. Early in the morning this trail may appear as silver
streaks on the plant surface, but as the day progresses it dries out and becomes less visible. (In contrast, caterpillars
which cause similar feeding injury do not leave a slime trail.)
WHY SLUGS ARE HAPPY Slugs have both male
and female reproductive organs, they mate with themselves if no other slugs are around.
The great grey garden slug's penis is nearly half its total body length. In fact, penis size
is reflected in the scientific name of one banana slug species: dolichophallus -- Latin for "long penis."
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