Her Obsession With Slugs Turns to WAR By Mona Keehn
The third week of July, I noticed that a few of my hosta leaves had collapsed and were turning brown. With my garden on the Master Gardener Tour only a few days away, I thought I might be able to find out just what was going on with those leaves. During the tour, I pulled one of the damaged leaves off and found that something had eaten away much of the petiole. No one seemed to know what the culprit could be. A few days later, I was walking by H. Liberty and pulled off one of the brown leaves to show my husband, Rick. I was surprised to see THREE slugs happily sleeping in the petiole. I had no idea that slugs could cause such damage.
Then I recalled one of the tips offered at one of our local hosta society’s meetings: Spray diluted ammonia (one part ammonia to 10 parts water) to kill slugs. “Yes!” The next morning I mixed up a gallon in my pumper sprayer and headed out to the garden at 6 am. I couldn’t believe how many slugs were happily munching away on my plants. It was very satisfying watching them shrivel up and fall to the ground as I sprayed them. This became my ritual every morning for
two weeks. Of course getting to the possible so I alternated and hit different areas each morning.I wondered how many slugs I was actually killing, so one morning I counted: 258. Hmm, that’s a lot of slugs. But just how many were there? Was I making a difference? I decided to do a little research, so I Googled “slugs” and began reading. Slugs live two years, lay eggs several times a season, they are hermaphrodites (they have both male and female sex organs, so any slug can mate with any other), they can stretch to 20 times their normal length and squeeze into very tiny openings. Slugs have 27,000 teeth, more than a shark, and like sharks they routinely lose and replace their teeth. They eat in cycles so only 5% are out at one time. “OH NO!
What?” This was looking hopeless. But then I wondered: They live for two years, but can they survive our winters? The opinion is that they cannot, but their eggs can. So, my curious brain started thinking, if only 5% are feeding at a time, where are the other 95%? I was going to find out. In the middle of the day, when they were resting, I went to H. Frosted Jade and with my head in the plant, started handpicking slugs. Tweezers proved very helpful. Slug slime absorbs water and that is why it is nearly impossible to wash it off of your hands. At first I didn’t see many, but as I started picking them off the petioles, I started seeing more and more. Some were at the very base of the petioles and some were even wedged into the holes they had eaten in the petioles. I counted 59! On to H. Montana Aeromarginata. I came up with 75. “OK”, I thought, “tomorrow I will see if there are any feeding on these plants”. At 6 am, I rushed out to check. OMG. There they were munching away. “This is insane,” I thought. “Maybe if I pour the ammonia solution into the center of the plant it will kill all the sleeping slugs.” I tried this for a while, but it wasn’t nearly as gratifying as seeing
them die before my eyes, and I really had no way of knowing if this was working.
The days were starting to get shorter by now and the time of day I could get out in the garden started to get later. One day as I was spraying, my pumper ran dry. As I was walking by a block wall on the north side of the house, I noticed that there were slugs clinging to it. I decided to hand pick those slugs and feed them to the fish since I was so close to the pond. Now that is a sight - watching the fish devour the enemy. I have always believed in recycling. What better way? So, I hand picked along the wall, fed the fish, went back and there were more slugs on the wall. I’m sure I didn’t miss them. Where were they coming from? I started counting. I noticed they were in the grass coming to the wall. For what? Werethey going to hide in the cracks for the day?
Not if I could help it. I kept picking and feeding. I got 358 throughout the day. That morning I sprayed 2 gallons of spray and counted 558 for a grand total of 916 in one day! My obsession was
getting bad.
Good Question
So, you ask, if they don’t live through the winter, why keep on? Well, they lay eggs several times a season! One square yard of garden on average can have 200 slugs. One slug has the potential of producing 90,000 grandchildren. Those are some devastating statistics. I have declared SLUG WARS. Why do I count? Don’t we always count the casualties of war?
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| A slug! |
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