Selena from Tacoma sent in a few pictures of her strawberry pallet garden recently–along with a plea for help.  She wrote,

I built a strawberry box in my garden this year using a reclaimed pallet thinking that elevating the strawberries would help keep the slugs away.  However, I have found that baby slugs have no problem making their way up the box to get to the berries!  Do you have a suggestion on how to keep the slugs away without using chemicals? I would prefer an organic or homemade remedy.

Yep, that is going to be a problem.   Obviously, your slugs have a taste for the good stuff. 😉

The key to treating them organically {in my opinion} is catching them early.  There are a couple of different methods you can try.  First up:  beer.  Not for you as a coping mechanism, but for the slugs.  They love the fermented yeast in the beer and will make their way into the beer where they will eventually drown.  {If you aren’t into purchasing alcohol, no worries, you can use non-alcoholic beer.}  Just take the can, a shallow yogurt cup or something like it {a kid’s to-go applesauce would work great} and stick it into the pallets, level with the strawberries.  Fill the container with beer and check it in the morning.  You should have dead-as-a-door-nail slugs floating in it.

Beer is just a first line of defense, though.  You should also combine it with hand-picking any slugs you see.  They like to come out and wreak all sorts of havoc at night, so catching them to squish them {a very therapeutic past-time, if I do say so myself} can be tricky.

For a little more aggressive treatment, you’ll have to go with organic options that you can buy at your Home and Garden store.  I know quite a few gardeners and chicken owners who swear by diatomaceous earth, which is still an organic option.  It’s  a white powder made from crushed fossils of diatoms { a rock}.  It basically cuts the slugs as they crawl across it.  {People also use it as an insecticide, to give their chicken dust baths in order to prevent poultry lice and mites, etc.}  I haven’t personally used it, so I can’t swear by it, but again, I have heard really good things about it.

My personal favorite organic method is Sluggo.  It still qualifies as an acceptable treatment in organic gardening.  It is basically iron phosphate {which doesn’t harm pets or other wildlife}.  It causes slugs to stop feeding, and as a result, die.  I have found it to be incredibly effective, when other methods have failed.  You have to be pretty religious about applying it weekly {during watering season}, as both a treatment and maintenance.

I am sure there are other methods you can try, but those are the ones that I am most familiar with.  If any of you have tried other successful slug abatement, make sure to leave it in the comments below!

~Mavis