If the garden is being put to bed for the winter and there's not much for them to damage, turn them loose.

They will destroy a young garden. It isn't their pecking that does most of the damage, it's their BIG FEET! They will tromp over and scratch up any seedlings. They will pick at fruit within reach, and strip your blueberry bushes as high as they can jump/flap (close to 3 feet). They will dig shallow dusting holes (one is not enough, twenty sounds better to them).

They may eat the little pear slugs, but mostly they're not crazy about the big banana slugs. They're sticky and stick to their beaks.

Ducks will do less damage to the garden and are better slug hunters, but they also have big poops.

I live in the Slug Capital of the World (the Pacific Northwest), and I find the two non-animal methods work best: hand picking the slugs on damp, overcast days, and using the non-toxic iron phosphate-based slug baits like Sluggo, Escar-Go! and Worry Free brands. Check the active ingredient carefully. Iron phosphate is safe for use around children, pets and beneficial insects like bees and worms, and it breaks down into a soil nutrient. It is now OMRI (Organic Materials Review Institute) Listed for use in organic gardening.

Metaldehyde-based killers like Cory's Slug & Snail Death, Deadline, and Snail-Tox are all toxic, esp to pets and birds. And I wouldn't use it around small children.

Sue

Thanks! Handpicking is all I've done so far, but it seems an endless battle! I enticed my son to help: We'd go out in the evening with scissors. That's the easiest and fastest way we've found, and it doesn't require a bucket or having to touch them.... We snip them in half, as cruel as it sounds, and count how many each of us gets. We get many hundreds in an hour, but leave many more hundreds behind!

I guess chickens wouldn't like our slugs much, they're the big, fat kind!

As for the Iron Phosphate, where would you put it? I use pretty heavy straw mulch -- would I put it on top of the straw, or tuck it underneath, or try between the straw and the plants?

Underneath mulch is usually where the slugs go/hide. You can lift the mulch and scatter the bait. If you have any boards lying around, lay them next to the mulch and scatter the bait under them. One good thing about this bait is that you don't have to put it down thickly. If the pieces are 1( to 2( apart, that seems to be okay. The bait melts after a certain amount of rain, so you would have to re-apply it. I don't know how effective it is in late fall/winter, though.

Here is a link that might be useful: How Can I Eat Slugs

My post got messed up, so I'm reposting it, if it allows me.

Underneath mulch is usually where the slugs go/hide. You can lift the mulch and scatter the bait. If you have any boards lying around, lay them next to the mulch and scatter the bait under them. One good thing about this bait is that you don't have to put it down thickly. If the pieces are one to two inches apart, that seems to be okay. The bait melts after a certain amount of rain, so you would have to re-apply it. I don't know how effective it is in late fall/winter, though.

Disheartening fact: slugs can live up to TWO YEARS without eating, and can work their way a couple of inches underground. Whenever you find eggs, squish them.

If any of your neighbors have ducks, ask the owners if you could collect slugs and feed them to the ducks.

And remember, slugs are 'escargot' without the shells, but you can buy the shells and reuse them. Below is an entertaining article on eating them (or thinking about eating them).

And I found another article about the nutrient value of them, but I had to google 'nutrient value of escargot' because nothing came up if I tried 'nutrient value of slugs': http://www.dietaryfiberfood.com/snail-escargot.php

In the article just above, they said that not only do the French like them, they are a big hit with Asians, esp Japanese. Which brings forth the idea of collecting them and selling them to Asian grocery stores. Let your son keep the profits as incentive to collect more. (I remember reading several years ago that slug farmers feed them a diet of moist cornmeal to clean out their guts before delivering them to whoever buys them.)

As for me, it took me about four years of collecting into milk cartons and putting them in the garbage can to notice a good reduction in numbers, and just afterward was when they came out with Sluggo, which has replaced handpicking.

Sue

Here is a link that might be useful: How Can I Eat Slugs

Thanks! It's good to know that if I keep at removing them, their numbers will eventually decrease. I do like escargot, but the eww factor definitely applies to preparing my own slugs, as mentioned in that blog!