Ugh! Slugs!! And what to do about them....

Slugs can be a real pest in your garden.  "Gumballs" are prickly little balls from Sweet Gum trees, which are found in the Lower Hudson Valley and elsewhere, and shed their gumballs in early June. They are shown below surrounding a spinach plant's stems, one recommended way of coping with them, which may or may not keep the slugs away....

In this case, as you can see below, the gumballs worked well with Swiss chard and escarole, but much less so with spinach (which you see from two angles, above and below).

 

Update on Friday, June 26, 2009 at 8:06PM by Kids Grow Greener

Weeeelllll....the gumball experiment seems not to have worked in the home garden, or only worked slightly. Next experiment: using copper strips embedded into the soil around plants.  For the latest on what to do---and NOT to do---in this particular battle, see the BBC article on the Gardening Links page, or link here:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A2876862