Last year, I let the slug population get out of hand. I finally started spending about 15 minutes each morning picking them off the potatoes and dropping them in soapy water. You have to be there before the sun is too bright, or they will be gone for the day.

Glndak

Try Sluggo. It's organic and it works.

Picking them will reduse the population dramatically. I had a real battle with them this year, but a combination of picking them and doing other things really helped.
Other things...

- Mix 20% amonia with 80% water in a spray bottle and carry the bottle with you. See one and spray! You'll see a disintegrating slug... Yuck! If there's leftover coffee in the pot from the morning, use that instead of the water. Spray the soil around plants, and you can spray the leaves of plants as well as long as these are plants which do not have really tender leaves. Hostas are fine as are Phlox Paniculata for example, but annual aster leaves suffer from this concoction.

- My main ingredient is used coffee grounds in my compost. In the gardens where I've used this compost, the population has gone down an amazing amount!

I tried beer and fermented solutions. Not sure if they work as the racoons found the dishes before the slugs did.

I agree about the handpicking. When the numbers are too high, you just gotta get out there every night in slug season, about 10 pm, with a container of soapy water and nab those slugs. After a year or two you will have made a good dent in the population and won't have to be as vigilant.

I have read that slug eggs can hatch after the mama slug has died, so I flushed the dead slugs down the toilet.
-O

According to USDA research conducted in Hawaii cold, caffienated coffee sprayed on affected plant leaves will do as much to control slugs as anything else. However the best thing to do is get your eco system in balance so there are controls for them in your garden. Toads and garter snakes do a good job of controlling slugs, and sufficient food sources other than your plants can help.

I being using lot of bags of coffee grounds from local coffee shops for slug/snail control around all my fall garden vegetables.

I also have had great results from buying a small sustainable slug product from a local garden center that contains iron phosphate.

I was told tha the iron phosphate would build up in the soil and become toxic.
Is there any thing I can do now to combat populations next summer?

Check the Oct/Nov Mother Earth News, page 124.

They recommend home-made crab grass cookies, raking up and composting old mulch, and say caffeine in any form is toxic to slugs. Spary with coffee or even No-Doze tablets dissolved in water.

Use small containers (like mushroom or tuna cans with lids still attached partly) set into the ground, filled with old beer or just yeast and sugar water. Slugs flock to that and drown, so you don't have to get up early or spray things or squish them. Plus you get to drink the rest of the beer. :-)

The only year I had a big slug problem was with a newly tilled garden where the previous owners had lawn with lots of chemicals applied to it. After a year or so of organic material applied and non-tilling practice, the snakes and toads and other creatures moved in and ate enough of them that I only saw a few here and there. Maybe it is all that digging in your garden that is disturbing the slug predators. :-) With the small containers, be sure they are mostly covered so that toads and things of that size can't get in and drown. I have lots of nice green containers made specially for that, my brother gave them to me, but I don't use them since I have no slug problems. They are made by American Organic Products I believe.

Marcia

I second the toad and frog idea. I had a few slugs but with no noticeable damage. I have observed the toads I've got start patroling after sunset during the summer. Now, if I could just teach the how to weed I'd be set.

Marcia? I hope you drink 'the rest of the beer' after you remove the drowned slugs :)

I have one shady garden bed that has major slug problems and one other semi sun bed that has minor slug problems. Lots of toads, but no frogs as there just isn't enough water to attract them here.

The toads may have reduced the slugs, but not enough to prevent noticeable damage to hostas and coleus.

The slugs don't appear to care for impatiens or my shrubs.

This year I didn't do anything to control them. Last year I used sluggo and it worked quite well, but I applied it after significant damage had already been done.

Haven't tried the caffeine yet, I assume it requires frequent applications? Trouble there is I am way too lazy to be continually spraying it or go on nightly slug pickings.

I need something much easier and more suited for the lazy person such as myself. Next year I won't be planting coleus in the ground, but in pots to see if that helps. If necessary I will 'poison' the exterior of the pot to prevent them from crawling up it, but from what I hear slugs don't usually crawl up anything very far, just snails.

Anyone know if slugs crawl up pots?

Ducks -- the best slug control. But then you have to control the ducks...

Yes, slugs will crawl up pots, chair legs, etc.
-O

Slight variation on the slug trap: Just use half empty cans of beer, and step on them so the edge of the part you drink out of is level with the ground. Maybe get a friend or 2 to help you out if you have a garden large enough to need a lot of traps :) If you plant them under something bushy, which is usually what slugs are drawn to, they aren't visible most of the time. You will have to replace the beer and empty slug corpses, but it isn't usually too hard to get replacement beer trap drinkers!

Hi i use pepper i shake it next to a rock and when a slug or a snail comes along they get a sniff lift up there head to sneeze and knock them self out on the rock

:)

Living near a river I get loads of slugs and snails, I've found they don't like touching copper so am busy finding any old copper pipe and laying it round my hostas. Too late for this year but I'll let you know next spring if it works.