10% vinegar or ammonia ... whichever is cheaper... and i think vinegar from the pickling aisle is cheaper than ammonia from the cleaning aisle ...

both are CONTACT kills.. you usually go out around dusk.. insert a pump tank spray end.. in the canopy.. and spray the backsides and stalks.. allowing some to drench down into the soil where they hide during the day ...

rainy days are also a good hunting time.. if its gloomy enough ..

i tried to avoid spraying the tops of leaves .. and never spray in sunshine... you can burn the leaves ...

weve covered slug lots of times over the years.. try the search engine at the top of the page ...

. and if i can find the old FAQs i will link you

ken

heres a link to page two2 ... be sure to peruse page one also .. ken

http://faq.gardenweb.com/forums/hosta-faq/p/30

Slugs require management. Watering selectively, keeping mulch dry, using Sluggo in the end of the season to keep population from multiplying into next season. Creating diversion areas. Hand collecting. Choosing hostas with thick leaves.

right.. i came back to say ... its a year around job ... and if you are starting now .. you already lost ...

full total fall cleanup ... some peeps drench dormant crowns with the 10% ... to kill those left in the mulch.. and any eggs left ... think of it this way ... kill one momma in fall .. and thats hundreds you dont have to kill next summer .. and btw ... they are both momma and daddy all in one ugly slug ... whats that all about ...

and then they start proactively in mid spring ... spraying the undersides .... etc.. per above ...

ken

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=slug+eggs&t=ffcm&iax=1&ia=images

Forgive my ignorance... I just moved to the Midwest from Texas, where we use vinegar to bake plants to death in the Texas sun. So this is for real? I can use vinegar on my hostas and they won't shrivel up an die? I get that you say only the bottoms of the leaves, or as a soil drench when the foliage has gone dormant... but that still sort of freaks me out. It really won't kill my plants??? Gahhhh....

10% ammonia or. Vinegar and water!

I do the beer in a small glass for the slugs, hand pick the snails and slugs early in the morning before I go to work ( lol ) and broken egg shells. As Ken stated, you have to be vigilant in the spring when cleaning up the leaves....I kill everything I can get my hands on.

Vinegar, as sold in stores is 5% acidic acid. It will kill slugs and vinegar straight will kill hostas (or at least severely damage the foliage. Diluting it to a 10% solution or 0.05 % solution will kill slugs and only slightly damage hostas. Ammonia is probably the most common fertilizer used commercially in farming in very high concentrations injected into the soil. So the choice is not the cheapest, the choice is whether to use a chemical that slightly harms your hostas or use one that in a 10 to 35% concentration kills the slugs very effectively and adds some slight fertilizer. Many people use vinegar to kill weeds. It does burn foliage but is ineffective because in many cases it leaves the roots alive and the weeds grow back as opposed to glyphosate which attacks plant enzymes and kills weeds from the roots up by starving the weed.

Hoo boy!! Jon, I'm SOOOO glad you clarified. When I read to use "10% Vinegar", I thought I needed to use 10% acidity vinegar (which is difficult to find, but still available and is often recommended in the organic gardening world to use as an herbicide). A 10% vinegar dilution makes way more sense! Thank goodness I wasn't in any hurry to start up on that chore.

Also, thank you for your point about ammonia - it makes a lot of sense. So the ammonia should be diluted 10-35% then? Is a particular percentage more effective/beneficial?

On a side note, I agree - I see way too much glyphosate phobia. My herbicide of choice is still my fingers, but the roundup comes out for things like poison ivy and bind weed. And that stupid wisteria that won't die.

Julia, since ammonia is so inexpensive I would say 35% (or 3 parts water one part household ammonia) would more easily kill slugs and it would have several times the fertilizer value however small that is. I would recommend the 3 part water to one ammonia based on the economics and effectiveness and a big maybe on fertilizing. 10% acidic acid will definitely clear out your nostrils and kill your hostas. I used to be involved with filters where glacial acidic acid (98%) was used as the mother liquor. The fumes would kill you and any contact with your skin would severely burn you. Terepthalic acid process which is used for Polyester, resins, in paints, plastics, hundreds of other products and further processed into PTFE for soda bottles. When using glyphosate for poison ivy or other tough to kill plants buy poison ivy strength or mix to poison ivy strength with concentrates. I use the generic glyphosate myself.

Metaldehyde is the most effective slug bait I use to maintain very low slug pressure, in addition to ammonia and vinegar plus picking the slugs off at dusk. Article in AHS Journal for reference. 1-2% concentration in pellet form.

Bruce, I wasn't familiar with Metaldehyde, so I did a little research. It is very effective, but there were several sites that warned of the danger of poisoning dogs and cats. This should be a consideration for those with pets and obviously for anyone who may have small children visiting the area. I couldn't use it because of this danger to my dog and more importantly, albeit unlikely (11 yrs old), exposure of my grandson.

I wouldn't group vinegar and ammonia together as equivalents. Vinegar is a herbicide and ammonia is a very common ingredient of fertilizer. I see no reason to choose vinegar. Jon

So more questions... what is the advantage of using (we'll say) ammonia, over keeping up with applications of Sluggo (which I understand is safe around animals and children). I get using the soil drench in the fall to kill eggs, which sluggo wont do. But what about the underleaf spray during growing season? Is this done to kill eggs that have been laid on leaves? It seems like it would take an awful long time....

what is the advantage of using (we'll say) ammonia, over keeping up with applications of Sluggo.......cost. A good spray at the crown and directed under the leaves is fairly quick. If the convenience of Sluggo is worth it. then that is the way to go. A 2.5 pound container is $15 at Home Depot, 10 pounds for $65. I don't know how far that would go. I don't think it (2.5 pound) would cover my gardens and it has to be repeated every month. It could add up to a good size dent in the annual hosta buying budget. Ammonia will kill both eggs and slugs. Jon

I use Sluggo around my whole yard. It takes very little and eventually (took me a few years) , I have seen very little damage around my plants this year. And zero holes in my hosta leaves. I think I have totally wiped out the populations under the decks that the pots are on. They used to decimate my liriopes, aspidistra and other broad leaf evergreens. Not any more. There are generic products available for less. It is iron phosphate. I think it constipates the little suckers. Anyway, they slither away to die and you don't get piles of corpses like you do with Bugetta or Deadline with methaldehyde which has been around forever in slug/snail baits.

-Babka

If you search on slugs in hosta there are over 2000 suggestions as to what possibly controls them.

If you consider Sluggo safer than Metaldehyde, you might want to read this article:

http://www.hostalibrary.org/articles/Iron.htm

Not to get into a debate or anything, but the article doesn't really say that Sluggo is more toxic than Metaldehyde. It just makes the point that you should probably make sure your kids and dogs aren't chowing down on it when your back is turned. Good advice for any garden product. (Additionally, my kids won't eat anything but lunchables anyway. Talk about toxic!)

Geez, Jon. Any method that has the tiniest chance of repelling rabbits is a winner in my book! That quote seems to imply he was just spraying the plants. Do you have to be careful to only hit the underside of foliage when using an ammonia dilution, or is that only with vinegar? Or is spraying the underside mainly done because that's where the slugs are?

Julia, you can soak the whole plant, the recommendation to spray the underside and the crown is, as you suggest, because this is where slugs hide. Spraying any other hiding places nearby within slug crawling distance makes sense as well. There would be no difference whether you choose vinegar (why, I cannot fathom) or ammonia which is not a herbicide and breaks down into nitrogen fertilizer for any plant. Ammonia breaks down in animals into urea in urine which may be why ammonia is said to repel rabbits. Deer? Nobody claims it is a deterrent that I know of and almost nothing deters them if they are hungry. Jon

Salt, pepper & a little garlic.

Escargot sans shell. lol.

http://forums.gardenweb.com/discussions/4771369/so-in-need-some-vinegar-to-clean-the-coffee-pot?n=14

Ken thank you for the info I really like that the ammonia does 2 things like the hostas like it and flourish from it, and kills slugs. My Q,is is that 3parts ammonia to one part water I believe that is what you stated? bz that is a lot of amonia tks

Just the reverse Madonna, 1 part ammonia to 2 to 3 parts water or a 33% to 25% concentration of Ammonia. 3 parts of ammonia to 1 part water would be a 75% concentration.

Just as a follow up to all of this awesome info/instruction... after a nice afternoon rain I noticed quite a few slugs out. I almost got out the Sluggo but then remembered it is supposed to rain tonight also so decided that wouldn't be ideal. Ah ha! Perfect time for the ammonia treatment!

i have to say... I expected it to be tedious, but it was oh so satisfying. Watching all those slugs shrinking away...