Sluggo works on slugs and snails pretty much anywhere including in heavily mulched areas.

Slugs like damp and dark and mulches provide this. It is a disadvantage to using mulches, but the benefits outweigh the drawbacks in most cases in my opinion.

I never heard of slugs eating potatos under ground though. Not saying they don't, just never heard of it.

hmm-- i could be wrong, but i think they're the culprits.

You might want to ask about the symptoms you are seeing with the taters in a veggie forum. There are a few frequent posters with tons (pun) of potato growing under their belt who could comment on what may be nibbling on the taters.

Certainly I could be wrong, but I have never heard of slugs feeding below the soil. Potatos do seem to 'enjoy' an above average number of below soil pests though.

Slugs, and snails, as well as many other wee buggers that ingabit our gardens prefer living conditions the exist in well mulched gardens, cool, moist soil. So the more mulch you have the more likely it is that you will see these buggers, but the beneficial insects that wil aid in controlling the pests also prefer that environment so you will have more of them too and eventually, if you refrain from poisoning everything, your eco system will balance out.
But the short answer to your question is, yes, mulched soils will have more slugs.

A couple of other deterrents are to spray your plants with garlic pepper tea. Get a couple of bulbs of garlic, peel, and toss in the blender, add several habanero peppers or the hottest ones you can find, remove stems and toss in the blender. Blend the heck out of them, then using a strainer, pour the mixture into your spray bottle. Add enough distilled water to fill it up, then go to town spraying.

You can also sink a couple of shallow containers, fill with beer, and let them drown in it. They are attracted to the smell of the beer and will fall in and never come back up. However, you will have to remove them and refill the container every couple of days.

Stephanie

I don't know if this is relevant to US conditions but slugs are a very common pest on potatoes in the UK. Thay are mentioned as one of the commonest problems in my RHS book 'The vegetable garden displayed.' There is a small black slug which lives just below the surface and will riddle potatoes with holes if they get the chance. Maybe it has to do with the cooler damper conditions over here.

Here is a link that might be useful: {{gwi:138605}}

Wireworms make small holes in potatoes as do cucumber beetles.

i tryed that Slug-go stuff and at $10 a can they were eating me out of house and home.
They were still eating my plants too. I switched to Diamacious Earth and that is when I noticed a real drop in population and diamage to my garden. i bout a 50 lb. bag of it from my co-op for $20.
When I do find one I drop it in a bucket of salt water.

to my mind the worst damage the slugs do is when they eat through the stalk (is it called the haulm?) as this works like felling a tree and a small slug atack there means the whole stalk above where they have eaten is destroyed.As often as not it is the whole lot..
They do also eat the actual potatoes but it is usually well into winter before they really do bad damage.Not just small slugs either.The millipedes also eat the potatoes.
I have to contend with a lot of damp weather so have to really go out at night with a flashlight and kill the slugs with a sharp pair of scissors.
If you keep the ground around the plants or the patch as bare as possible that can be a big help.
I also leave down bits of wood etc for them to shelter during the day as it makes it easier to find and kill them in the daytime.
However they will hide underground or at the base of the plants so you will never get to the end of them.
I always think that if you try the beer in the ground trick you run the risk of attracting slugs from further afield.And you have to be careful that other insects don't drown in the jars as can happen if they are buried at ground level.
I have heard it reccommended to build small mounds of stones where small beetles can live as they apparently eat the slugs (their eggs I think-small and white/translucent like tiny ping pong balls that you would probably want to remove or at least disturb or expose if you saw them)
Another trick is to choose the variety of potato that is less attractive to slugs.For instance Kerr Pink is very bad .I wonder if it is because it is floury but I don't know. But other varieties are more suitable if the slugs are actually eating the tubers.I think Golden Wonder is not so bad but I am not certain.
I haven't tried the garlic pepper tea but I assume its disadvantage may be that it will wash off with rain.I am trying caffeine at the moment and that is what applies in that case.

The poison baits are expensive.
Beer can be expensive.
Most any control, except changing the environment so the slugs predators can control them is expensive. Dig into your gardens soil and try to determine why slugs are such a problem for you and correct those problems, encourage predators of slugs to take up residence. do not try to eradicate all of your slugs because you will not. Slugs were here before us and most likely will be after we are gone.

unfortunately i don't know how to tell what the problem with the soil is. i believe i've been treating it well these 15 years, with compost and sometimes with soil amendments like rock powder, etc it's always been organic, i stopped tilling last year, and i mulch with shredded leaves in the fall and the remaining leaves and straw in the spring. the few times i've had the soil tested it's been healthy.

bites out of the tubers: last year i had a lot of slugs on the potato beds -- i don't remember if i caught them in the act, or what made me think they were the culprits. i think they're there because they like the straw mulch, but i'm not sure. i don't know how to grow potatoes without the mulch. is there a way that won't attract slugs?

as for slug predators, i'll look into it. does anyone know offhand?

thanks

Ducks apparently.Birds supposedly but I haven't found them to be a help.Hedgehogs if you can get one. I think if your straw is well composted it would attract the slugs less as there would be less cavities for them to shelter in.And be sure you don't have big lumps of soil on the surface as these also provide a moisture retaining area for them to shelter and lay eggs under.
Myself I mix lawn clippings into the soil and think that always works well but I didn't read it anywhere -just tried it.They need to be well mixed and ideally below the surface as if the grass turns into large slimy wet pieces it will be very popular with slugs.
I have also used straw and mixed it into the soil but was disappointed with the result.The grass clippings worked much better.They say potatoes need an acid soil and I imagine that the grass clippings are very acid.
Also I have to move ground every year or so and since I started doing that I got better results.

Do you have toads and snakes in your garden?
Do you encourage birds to hang around?
What is the humus level of your soil? 6 to 8 percent?

kimmsr,
i have seen an occasional small toad, but not enough to eat much of anything, and never a snake in the garden. does the result of old decomposed leaves provide humus? or any compost for that matter? a lot of people are confused about the difference between humus and compost, and i'm one of them. how do you measure the humus level? i'll look into plants that attract birds.

lucy,
you think the grass clippings mixed into the soil inhibit the slugs? do you use a mulch above ground? what do you use?

No they don't inhibit the slugs but if incorporated when completely fresh -a bit like making a cake mixture they won't encourage them to stay.
I imagine you may need to mulch above ground to conserve moisture but here we don't need to so much.
I do find the grass clippings alone are enough but I am not so sure if I would use them on the maincrop or just for the earlies.I have not decided if it is more important for the ground to be in fine condition with lots of well broken down humus rather that it be rich in nutrients.And I think the grass clippings probably encourage leafy growth only but as I said I use them repeatedly- although not so far with obviously poor soil.
At first I used to use stable manure thinking it was bound to be great but found that too much of this caused the tubers to rot in wet weather.
This year (and last) through laziness and lack of time I haven't really prepared the ground from last year and just lay the spuds in a small hole and as they emerge I am recovering them with a layer of grass clippings followed by compost .But with the plants already growing it is a bit fiddly mixing the grass in with the compost.Still no problems so far.
I have lots of toads but also lots of slugs.....
I thought humus was the same as compost just that compost is man made and need to be put into the soil but humus is the end result from compost being added plus any nutural decomposition in the soil or on the surface.
Leaves take years to break down and apparently provide hardly any nutrition.

Humus is the residual organic matter left in your soil after most of the most delectable stuff has been digested by the Soil Food Web. What you want to do is add enough organic matter, whether compost, leaf mold, old plant stubble, so the humus level increases every year. Here is a simple way to measure humus levles in your soil;
From a soil sample put enough of the soil to make a 4 inch level in a clear 1 quart jar, with a tight fitting lid. Fill that jar with water and replace the lid, tightly. Shake the jar vigorously and then let it stand for 24 hours. Your soil will settle out according to soil particle size and weight. A good loam will have about 1-3/4 inch (about 45%) of sand on the bottom. about 1 inch (about 25%) of silt next, about 1 inch (25%) of clay above that, and about 1/4 inch (about 5%) of organic matter on the top.

Kimmsr, do you think the beer will still work if it passes through my kidneys first? Tom

Nope. It is the yeasty odor of stale beer that attracts the wee buggers. I don't use beer to trap slugs because I don't see any good reason to waste my money that way, but the left over morning coffee works quite well, again not recycled.

I have had good luck with used coffee grounds sprinkled around my most slug attacked items (lettuce, hostas, spinach). They seem to dislike coffee! Don't put too much or it can repel water.

Not sure if this actually works cause I haven't tried it yet, but I've heard that sprinkling broken egg shells around your plants will repel snails because the egg shells are sharp and the slugs don't like to cross them....if anyone has tried this before, does this work?

the egg shells get dirty from the rain.Maybe with a plentiful supply it might work but I abandoned them years ago.
One technique I use is to protect seedling areas with awall of fabric stretched between the 4 corners of a rectangle-each corner being a stake hammered into the ground.The walls are buried about six inches into the ground so that the slugs cannot tunnel underneath.They can climb over but only a few will.Make sure there are no slugs inside to start and keep an eye on them all the same
The idea came from the carrot fly barrier but it will keep out slugs from a small area and you can move it around.
I use metal rods cut to about 2 foot lengths to make the corners as they are stronger than wood and stretch nylon string tight between them.Then I suspend the fabric from them like a clothes line and bury the bottom.You can use clear plastic instead of fabric but it tears easily unless it is good quality.

If you are really angry at the little buggers, mix up ammonia (really cheap stuff) with about 3 or 4 parts water, get a good spray bottle and give'em a squirt. Their little mucousy bodies simply dissolve.

Until they ate their way through a few hundred dollars worth of my plants I just didn't have the heart to zap them. But, now... its happy hunting.

I have used beer a few years to kill slugs, works great. You can buy cheap beer especially for this purpose, they aren't fussy. If you don't have beer or want to buy any, mix yeast and sugar in water, that works, too. I have found that one 12 oz. beer fills up my 3 Slug Saloons and lasts for a week or more. A few rounds and most of the slugs are gone, so it really doesn't cost much.

Slug Saloons are little plastic green things with slightly elevated caps (to keep out rain.) They are made by American Organics. My brother gave them to me years ago, but I hadn't used them before because I haven't had slug problems for years (good organic soil!) Last year was wet wet wet and they came out in force, especially attacking my wax beans. I put out the Slug Saloons, they quickly became filled with dead slugs. Disgusting, but easy, cheap, and organic.

It is important to have the container only slightly open, so that slugs can crawl in, but not larger things. I found a drowned toad in the beer once years ago, when I was using a shallow tin can. Felt dreadful about it.

Marcia

Beer traps can use stale or cheap beer. I use shallow dishes and let the birds fish them out. Some slugs eat dead leaves and such, and may be beneficial, but I'm not sure the same ones don't eat live leaves too. I've never looked into it. We have 4 kinds here at least. The small black ones and the slightly larger gray ones, which are eaten by birds, snakes, etc... The larger striped and "leopard slugs" are stickier and animals avoid eating them. The gray ones are definitely eaters of live vegetation, but the others I'm not sure about.
Red bellied and brown snakes are slug eaters (Storeria sp.) almost exclusively.

Ziggy