Hi,

Problem: I have a small piece of land where I (try to) grow vegetables and legumes. The problem is that the place is infested with slugs of all sizes, colours and (I think) species. One plants anything there, the slugs will gladly eat the plants. I kill them manually in early morning or at dusk. It is not uncommon to kill over 300 in one day, when I have the patience and time to go after them. I also use beer traps with great success, the slugs will get in and fill the beer pots almost up to the border with their bodies on their last drink before going to slug heaven. Even so, seems like the slugs are inexhaustible.

I do not want to use those toxic pellets to kill the slugs, as I am afraid they can contaminate the soil and the vegetables, strawberries and the like.

For this reason, I was thinking of building up around 4 elevated garden beds (7 x 1 meters), with feet supporting them so I can paint the feet with that green sticky stuff that will block the slugs to get up and reach my vegetables to feast on them.

This has the advantage of letting me grow ducks in the piece of land, as they are known to eat the slugs.

The elevated bed could look like this one (below), but must be much simpler, no frills, no luxury. My piece of land is in the middle of an agricultural land with farms all around, so the materials used must be very resistant to rain, cold, frosty days (-10C) and very hot summers and to the eventual rodent that will somehow find the elevated garden bed structure tasty. Tarred wood planks covered with plastic seem to be a fine solution to build the beds.

I thought for instance to use old (and still good) vine training stakes and somehow assemble plastic barrels cut in half over them and fill the half-barrels with earth.

However, I am short of ideas. Any advice, suggestion, ideas are welcome! :-) Please, keep posting them!

Rgs

Slug Victim