One of my favorite parts about spring, is planting my vegetable garden. But with a rainy and colder than average spring up here in the Pacific Northwest, my vegetables have come under the attack of a certain slimy predator—the slug!
Upon talking to a friend with a very green thumb, I learned of a trick to capture and kill slugs. If you bury a small plastic bowl in your soil and fill it with beer, slugs will drop in to drink the beer and either drown or drink themselves to death (I’m not entirely sure which happens first).
My first go round I set my traps with Nectar Ales IPA. After one night, I was delighted to find both traps were filled with slugs. But a few days later, I noticed there was a new group of slugs munching on my plants. This time I decided to go with a cheaper option for bait and I headed to the corner store to buy the cheapest beer I could find. The winner was a $1.25 tallboy of Steel Reserve. The next morning I checked my traps and didn’t find a single slug. I topped off the traps and tried again. The next morning both traps were flipped upside down, empty, with no slugs.
So what I think I’ve learned from this, is that slugs really like good beer, so much so that they would die to get a taste of sweet, sweet, IPA. Racoons on the other hand, seem to really like malt liquor.
Have you used beer to kill slugs? If so, what flavor seems to work best for you?
