Slugs, The Garden Variety

Yesterday when I was picking some ripe tomatoes, I realized every tomato close to the ground had holes in it. Upon some closer inspection I found slugs. Many, many slugs. Slimy, creepy, disgusting slugs. YUCK!

See the wet spot on the upper right? That is where this one was resting and where it moved for the photo op. My skin just crawls looking at it and writing about it.


I saw some slugs earlier this summer in the rhubarb plants. Silly me, I didn't do anything about it at that time. My thinking: So they eat the rhubarb. Big deal. This is a picture of the rhubarb this morning. The lazy creatures are still there! But now they have produced so many offspring, they have moved to the tomato plants!

I read online about the beer treatment, so last night (early evening) Curt and I went to the garden to set beer traps. We found so many slugs on the main stem of three tomato plants, I also used the salt box and sprinkled the base of the plants liberally. Curt caught many of the wet moving critters and I happily smashed them. Both of us just felt covered in slug slime and did many hand washings to remove the sticky mucus. YEW!

I checked the beer traps this morning. A few slugs have met their demise by drowning in the beer. I will have to buy some cheap beer today to continue the process. I looked at the base of the tomato plants and they are just covered in slug slime. I will buy more salt, too.

We have been fortunate to get timely rains this late in the summer. The down side of the precipitation is the garden is very moist; perfect slug conditions. But I have declared war on the creatures. First battle was last night. So far the slugs are ahead. But I am going to do all I can to save the tomatoes! The war is on.