Several years ago, I took a friend out to dinner for his birthday and he ordered a plate of Escargot, snails out of the shell. As I watched him suck the slimy creatures into his mouth and squish them between his teeth, I was reminded of a Harry Potter film. Harry’s pal, Ron, placed a spell on their nemesis Malfoy, and it backfired, causing Ron to continuously vomit up slugs!
Both slugs and snails are of the same family of creatures known as mollusks and include octopuses and oysters. To say it bluntly, slugs are disgusting creatures! Slugs produce slime and scoot and slide themselves about by a muscular foot. On their head they have four tentacles, The two upper are for sight and smell and the two lower tentacles are used for touch and taste.
Garden slugs are voracious eaters! They love tender green seedlings and leaves and cause enormous damage to plants. In a single night, they can eat several times their own weight and travel up to 40 feet. They hide on sunny days in weeds, under boards, and ground cover, coming out at night or dark cloudy days to eat. They will consume newly sprouted seedlings, lettuce, herbs, basil, strawberries and tomatoes. Slugs are infamous for destroying hosta by chewing huge holes in the variegated leaves. They don’t care for smelly plants like Rosemary.
Advertisement - Story continues below
Request advertising info. View All.
Slugs have both male and female sex organs. Their sex organs and anus are right behind their head. Slugs can produce six egg batches a year, with 80 eggs per batch or 500 eggs a year. Young slugs can begin reproducing three to six months after they hatch. It doesn’t take long for them to overwhelm a garden. One species of slugs have the unusual problem of the male getting stuck within the female as they mate. The female takes care of the problem by chewing off the stuck body part. Since the slug still has its female parts, it can still reproduce!
Both snails and slugs can carry parasites and diseases harmful to animals and people. Children should refrain from touching them because it is possible to come in contact with the fatal disease Meningitis.
If food is scare, slugs will fight and attack each other on disputed territories. I battle them in my little greenhouse for most of the winter when I drag in pots with the slugs hiding in the soil or under the pots. They come out of night and have caused extensive damage to my plants. I often go out at night with a flashlight and go slug hunting!
While many people use poisoned bait to kill slugs, there are organic or natural ways to slow them down. The most obvious is to pick them up and destroy them. If a board or large pieces of cardboard are laid out at night, slugs will hide under it as the sun comes up. Then it is an easy task to pick them up and eliminate them.
Some gardeners swear it is possible to trap them with beer traps. They crawl in to get the beer and drown. Others believe slugs will not crawl over coffee grounds, egg shells, or copper sheets. Diatomaceous Earth is a product made from ground up fossilized fresh water diatoms. The slugs rip their underbellies as they crawl through the gritty powder and eventually die.
Slugs love wet, warm, and humid places. In places such as Hawaii, Florida, and California, farmers spend millions of dollars annually to fight slugs and slow them from destroying crops.
As disgusting as they are, slug lovers defend the creatures and say they are beneficial. They feel slugs perform an important function by eating fungus and rotting plants!
Image by Pete Linforth