Thursday, January 21, 2010

Goodbye Mr Slug

I have recently had an invasion of the largest kind. Leopard slugs, they're called. Rotten things are annoying my pet rabbits and making a mess of my veggie patch. Now, according to some web sites, these slimy creatures don't eat your garden, instead they eat pet food and decaying plants. Well I can tell you, my plants didn't even have time to decay before the nasty slimy things started to eat my lettuces and silver beet.

I tried feeding them porridge oats. Made them get mighty fat. Read that oats should make them explode. Unfortunately I saw no sign of exploding slugs. That would have been a sight to behold though.

One night I went out and collected an entire ice cream container full of them. How gross is that!

So I decided that enough is enough. I'm not out there working my butt off in the hot sun just so some molluscs can have a party late at night. I blitzed them with slug/snail killer. Sprinkled some lovely green pellets around the veggie patch last night, and in the slugs favourite hang out, near the strawberries. Low and behold when I went out this morning, there was a pile of shrivelled up slugs.

And you know what? The slug/snail killer was cheaper than Vegemite.

No, this Vegemite:-
I don't drink beer, so I didn't want to make them a beer trap. Only sparrows around here anyway, and I don't mind if they eat poisoned slugs. The blue tongue lizards have all but been chased away by nearby dogs and cats :) I'd rather have the lizards and an intact garden but hey! What would I know.

Have you had slugs or snails in your garden?