• The most difficult of all methods of controlling slugs is to pick them up by hand;
• Another way that will help get rid of pests - using ash. Ash can be obtained from a stove or from a regular fire. Before working with ash, it must be sifted through a sieve several times. Apply a thin layer of ash to the strawberry bushes. Of course, it will become very dirty, but it can be easily cleaned with water, but slugs will no longer spoil the berries;
• You can also sprinkle the perimeter where strawberries grow fine sawdust- this is something that slugs really dislike;
• Mustard powder or salt will help just as much. Use strong solution of table salt for spraying plants. For the very delicate skin of slugs, this solution will be destructive.
• Another option is to make traps, as shown in the video below.

Slugs eat young shoots and shoots, leaves, plant stems, and parts of roots and tubers protruding above the ground. Strawberries, peppers, cucumbers, tomatoes and other crops, cabbage greens also suffer from voracious creatures - mollusks are able to settle inside and eat away the pulp.

Even if the damage is insignificant, the presentation of the product deteriorates and the plant itself is weakened. Slugs transmit viral and fungal infections by crawling from one plant to another. This can often cause more damage than the fruit eaten.

Excessively moist areas located in lowlands are especially affected by them.

There are many ways to combat slugs in the garden, chemical and folk. You need to start activities as early as possible, in the spring, as soon as it’s time to start gardening work. To understand which method is better to choose, consider them all.

Agrotechnical prevention

Proper agricultural practices in the garden area serve as preventive measures to get rid of it. In particular, reducing humidity, as well as interfering with the unhindered movement of pests across the surface and destroying their natural shelters.

Basic Techniques

Mulching garden strawberries, according to the website, reduces the slug population in the garden several times.

Agricultural techniques are simple and accessible, the only thing is that you need to do everything on time and constantly. This can significantly reduce the likelihood of plant damage.

Natural enemies

There are animals in nature that help get rid of slugs, although they are not their main food. It’s great if the area is often visited by hedgehogs, frogs and toads, ground beetles, and various small birds.

To attract them, according to gardeners, it is useful to place containers with water, or build something like a pond away from the main plantings. However, if the soil is quite wet, frogs and toads will appear on their own, the main thing is not to drive them away.

There are plants whose smell repels shellfish. The following is used as green protection:

• Parsley
• Garlic
• Sage
• Rosemary
• Marigold.

All of these are plants with a strong spicy or pungent odor. They can be planted along the edges of beds, or to compact crops. It won't hurt them, and you'll get some greenery for the table.

Planting garlic in horticultural crops(pictured among strawberries) will help get rid of many pests.

There is another enemy of slugs, practically invisible to the human eye. This is a nematode - a microscopic worm. If it is difficult to attract hedgehogs and birds to the site, then things are different here: it is the owners who can populate the site with these creatures harmful to mollusks.

Photo of the packaging of the drug Nemaslug (Nemaslag).

It is not sold in Russia and Belarus, but it is easy to buy online at. The price, including delivery to Russia from England, will be about 20 dollars (less than 1,500 rubles at 2016 prices). The drug should be stored in the refrigerator.

Manual collection

The easiest way to get rid of slugs in the garden is to inspect the garden plot in the morning and collect them from the plantings.

Favorite habitats are metal and wooden surfaces, dark, damp places. For example, the tap where water is drawn from, iron watering cans or buckets, the bottom of the porch, irrigation hoses covered with condensate. They often hide in the shade of plantings, near the rhizomes of cabbage, or in a rosette of strawberries.

The sooner you inspect, the more slugs you can find.

Manual collection justifies itself as the very first step in high concentration.

Protective barriers

The essence of the method is to block the path of pests. The soil around the perimeter of the site, around the beds, is sprinkled with something rough and sharp. In addition to sand and nut shells, more effective slaked lime, wood ash, and crushed river mollusk shells can be used.

Dry mustard and dry mustard are also good in this regard. coffee grounds, superphosphate. It is advisable to make several narrow strips at a distance of 10-20 centimeters from each other.

If you need to protect isolated trees, shrubs from slugs, large flowers, you can pour a shaft of sand around the hole.

Under mulching material of natural origin - pine needles, sawdust - moisture can accumulate, which, on the contrary, will attract slugs. Therefore, the mulch must be turned periodically.

You can also protect plants in the garden using ordinary water. Fill any long containers or grooves with it and place it around the beds. Once in the water, the slugs die.

Interestingly, copper can help. Any materials containing copper - wire, or covering material containing this metal - will cause a current discharge upon contact with the mollusk.

Mustard helps in the fight not only against slugs in the garden, but also against insects. More details about this in the video:

Traps and bait

An alternative to manual collection is to use special devices. Traps and baits folk recipes usually made from improvised material. They need to be checked periodically and any pests found should be destroyed.

The most effective traps against slugs

What to do with collected slugs? The humane way is to take it further into the forest, or throw it into a pond to feed the fish. If there is a bird on the farm, they will serve as an excellent treat for it.

Chemical methods

Many drugs against slugs have been developed based on the pesticide Metaldehyde. The most popular are “Thunderstorm” and “Slug Eater” - both are available in the form of granules or powder lilac color. The operating principle of "Thunderstorm" is simple: the mollusks attracted by it eat it and die within 1-3 hours.

(Photo of packaging enlarges by clicking)

The method of using "Thunderstorm" against slugs and other poisons based on metaldehyde is the same. The powder is scattered over the area in a dosage of 15-20 g. for 5 m2. A more economical option is the targeted distribution of the substance around the beds and free-standing plants. This creates an impenetrable barrier for pests.

The manufacturer claims that bird-repellent additives have been added to the active substance; however, you should not use it if chickens and other domestic animals may accidentally be nearby.

It is important to remember that metaldehyde-based products are toxic. They do not harm earthworms or insects, but can be dangerous to pets and humans. Therefore, it is necessary to exclude cats, dogs and other pets from eating pellets.

Instructions for use of "Slime Eater" produced by JSC Firm "August", Russia (enlarges by clicking).

Vegetables and fruits near which the drug was placed must be thoroughly washed. Harvest can only be done three weeks after the last treatment.

There is a drug called “Ulicide” that is safe for humans and all animals. Its active ingredient is iron phosphate. These are blue or blue granules, used similarly to products with metaldehyde.

Chemicals should be used only when the number of slugs is very large and other methods do not help.

Folk remedies

A number of methods have been developed to combat slugs in the garden using household substances. We offer several recipes from the collection of popular advice.

On our channel there is great video A video that contains all the tips for fighting slugs in your garden:

When choosing means of combating pollution, you need to start with the most environmentally friendly and gentle ones. These are, first of all, agricultural techniques, then collecting pests manually or using traps. The most powerful are chemicals.

However, even their use does not cancel following the rules of agricultural technology. An integrated approach will best help rid your garden area of ​​slugs.

It often happens that a strawberry bed is attacked by slugs or snails. People most often call them the ugly word “slugs.” It should be noted right away that there is no need to panic, since there are many ways to combat such pests, and most end successfully.

• The body of the mollusk is similar to that of a snail, however, without a protective shell.
• The consistency is slimy, slippery to the touch, light gray in color.

Less often in nature, a different color is observed - yellowish or dirty orange individuals. is usually registered naked gray slug .

Danger

This is a rather serious pest - it causes multiple damage to berries and leaves.

If everything is left to chance, slugs will completely destroy strawberries within a season.

The danger of the presence of a pest is that for quite a short time it is capable of destroying more than half of the bed - depending on the size of the plot. Moreover, it eats not only leaves, but also berries, which spoils the presentation of the fruit and leads to losses.

Signs of a pest presence

A slug on a berry during the day is a fairly rare occurrence; if this happens on your strawberries, then the pest population is already very large.

• holes on leaves;
• silver marks on the crop;
• damaged fruits;
• damaged fruits contain mucus.

Ways to control slugs on strawberries

Trap out plastic bottle overnight she collected a rich “harvest”, and the bait for the slugs was beer.

• chemicals;
• environmental methods;
• traditional methods;
• mechanical removal.

Chemicals

Metaldehyde is available in granules that are resistant to water and remain effective for three weeks.

Slugs can be eliminated using chemicals.

If there are hedgehogs in your area, attract them to your area.

Preventative measures are an effective way to combat.

All birds eat slugs, including chickens.

Folk remedies

As a caution, it can be noted that all previously listed measures should be used with extreme caution.

Some measures can endanger not only shellfish, but also cause harm to the plants themselves, for example, not all strawberry varieties tolerate soil acidification well. But liming is also not the optimal solution for all varieties. Using the specified means, you need to make sure that it is suitable for a particular variety. The best prevention is to prevent severe waterlogging of the soil.

Video about proven methods of fighting slugs

– it’s quite a difficult matter. These garden monsters only appear in dark time days or on cloudy days, the rest of the time they are quite difficult to notice, as they hide under the foliage. Most often, it is strawberries that suffer from them. How to deal with this problem, and how to protect your crop from these parasites?

Know the enemy by sight

Slugs on strawberries are quite dangerous pests that love plants with large and delicate leaves. They live mainly in dense thickets and places with high humidity. The main harm is that they literally eat vegetables and fruits and significantly spoil their appearance. After their appearance, a shiny mark remains on the products. It is quite difficult to get rid of, and it really ruins your appetite.

In order to save strawberries from slugs, you can turn to the help of various chemicals. However, this should be done strictly before the first fruits appear. If the berries are already ripe, then the use of chemicals is unacceptable, as they will make the product extremely toxic.

Another way to protect the harvest is to use ash. It can be obtained from a regular fire. It is necessary to sprinkle the strawberry bushes directly on top, which will make them very dirty and not attractive to pests. The ash itself is not hazardous to human health and is washed off quite simply.

A practically safe remedy for humans is the use of mustard powder. To do this, it must be diluted in water until a strong solution is formed. If necessary, you can add table salt and treat the bushes with the resulting product. Such spraying is detrimental to the delicate skin of pests, which will allow you to get rid of most of them.

Another amazing and fairly simple way is to use instant coffee. Recent studies have shown that caffeine has a detrimental effect on slugs and snails, so spraying with a regular coffee solution can be used to combat them.

By following our simple tips, you can easily rid your garden of uninvited guests. As you can see, all the methods are quite simple, but it’s up to you to judge the effectiveness!

Slugs are pests that eat vegetables and berries growing in the garden. Appearance Slugs resemble snails, only without a shell. The colors of these mollusks can be different: green, gray, brown, sometimes orange. Most often, naked slugs are found in garden beds. It is necessary to get rid of it immediately, but it is not so easy, so in order to protect your garden, you will have to work hard.

About the pest

It is not difficult to detect the appearance of slugs in your beds - holes or silvery marks begin to appear on the leaves of vegetable, berry and fruit crops. In addition to leaves, these pests eat fruits and berries. In addition to the fact that holes remain on vegetables and berries from eating, slugs tend to leave behind mucus on strawberries, strawberries, apples or cabbage, after which the fruits and vegetables lose their presentation, and there is no desire to eat such products.

Slugs are also intermediate hosts helminths, this means that they can infect livestock that eats the grass on which the slug crawled, as well as poultry, which can peck them.

One of the difficulties in the fight against shellfish is that they can be found in daytime almost impossible, due to the fact that they are mainly nocturnal. Being moisture-loving pests, on sunny and hot days they hide in the ground or under the foliage of plants. By periodically watering the plants, it is impossible to wash out the slugs; they multiply even better from water.

However, effective ways to combat slugs exist, which means that if the question arises of how to get rid of slugs on strawberries, you should carefully study the information presented below in order to save your harvest and for a long time forget about these pests.

Methods for controlling slugs

If slugs or snails eat strawberries, we will find out what needs to be done by considering all the available means to destroy them. Controlling these pests is a rather complex process, but possible. There are 3 methods for killing slugs.

Chemical

Metal hydride is one of the main chemicals that helps to effectively resist slugs and protect crops from pests. Using this substance is easy and simple, because. It is enough to scatter its granules over the beds. Slugs eat them and die in a short time, suffering from intestinal poisoning. When found large cluster shellfish located in one place, you can sprinkle metal hydride on them. The substance can penetrate the slugs through the skin, after which poisoning will occur.

Freshly slaked lime or ground iron sulfate also works well against slugs. In addition, gardeners use a mixture of bleach and stove ash. Tobacco dust, which is scattered throughout the garden, in places where slugs appear, is popular. The pests begin to shed poisoned mucus, after which the procedure for treating the beds with chemicals must be carried out again.

Metal hydride

It is important to note! When the strawberries are already ripe, you cannot use chemicals to kill pests, because... thus, you can harm the health of the person who eats these berries.

People's

The appearance of slugs on strawberries is upsetting; folk methods that are environmentally friendly will help you deal with them.

However, in this case it is worth a lot of work. First, you should remove or reduce the number of dark and damp areas in the garden (favorite places for slugs). Then it is necessary to periodically remove debris, possible organic residues, and weed. In the autumn, it is advisable to dig up the soil; this will help in destroying slug eggs and other pests. During digging, the eggs will come out, and as a result, when winter comes, they will freeze.

For active pest control, you can attract frogs, hedgehogs or birds. In order for birds to start visiting the garden frequently, birdhouses can be built; hedgehogs are usually given wintering houses and lured with milk. You can build a small pond for frogs.

Also one of the simplest and safe ways is to plant special herbs, the aroma of which acts on slugs as a deterrent.

Lavender- folk method

The following plants are suitable for such purposes:

• sage;
• lavender;
• rosemary;
• garlic;
• thyme.

Such herbs will scare away not only slugs, but also another big lover of strawberries - ants.

Preventive measures should be applied, for example, after the strawberries are planted, the seedlings begin to be sprayed with a solution of ammonia and vinegar (1:6 with water). This product will help protect plants from slugs. You can also use mustard powder (5-6 tablespoons per 10 liters of water).

One of the popular remedies for slugs among gardeners is strong instant coffee. It is sprayed on strawberry leaves from the outer and inside In dry weather, it is recommended to treat the soil with coffee. After the precipitation has passed, the spraying procedure is repeated.

Dry mustard, slaked lime or wood ash (30 grams per 1 sq. m) are also suitable for protection against slugs. These products deoxidize the soil well; pests try to avoid such soil, which means they will quickly leave the area.

One of the most popular means of combating slugs is the use of salt. It is sprinkled on the area where slugs have accumulated. Salt literally eats away shellfish.

Mulching strawberry beds with film

A good method of getting rid of slugs is to mulch strawberry beds with film. When night comes, slugs gather under the film, because... there is high humidity here, and with the arrival of the heat of the day, because the film tends to heat up and the soil underneath it becomes hotter, the pests die, because can't stand it high temperatures. Mulching the beds with pine needles will also help effectively protect against pests.

Hot pepper may come out good remedy in order to fight off the slugs. To make the tincture, you need to take 1 kilogram of pepper, cut it into small pieces, then add it to a saucepan with a volume of 10 liters, cook the mixture for 5 minutes and let it brew for several days. For ease of further use, it is recommended to bottle the tincture. Before spraying, half a glass of the mixture is diluted in a bucket of water with the addition of grated soap.

You can create a kind of fence for slugs from coarse sand, crushed egg or nut shells. The “fence” is located around the protected plants, thereby protecting them. These mollusks do not tolerate rough surfaces because their abdomens are damaged, so the plants will be safe.

Famous folk remedy One way to combat slugs is to use beer. These pests are true connoisseurs of this intoxicating drink. As soon as you place containers of beer in the garden, its smell will attract these nasty mollusks. They fit into a container with a drink and drown in it, unable to get out (the edges should be 1-2 cm above the ground). The beer should be changed every couple of days until all the slugs have disappeared from the area.

Many gardeners, in order to protect strawberries from shellfish, sprinkle the soil with dry soil after watering the beds, because. slugs don't like dry places. Drip irrigation is also arranged, or drainage is installed under the beds. Last method is costly and time-consuming, but very effective.

Mechanical

One of the most simple ways To destroy slugs on your site, you can simply collect pests. To do this, you need to put on gloves and take a bucket or other container to put the collected mollusks there. Next, the slugs should be taken outside the site and there you should choose a way to get rid of them forever, so that they will no longer have the opportunity to return to the garden. Pests are very slow and will not be able to escape, so this method very light. However, it is not suitable for particularly sensitive and squeamish gardeners, because... slugs have a rather unpleasant appearance.

Healthy strawberries

Thus, it is best for the gardener to decide how best to get rid of slugs on strawberries. To choose one or another method for combating slugs, you must carefully study all the methods presented above. Each gardener, like the plot, needs an individual approach.

Each method has its advantages and some disadvantages. For example, at the beginning of fruiting of fruit and berry crops, the use of any chemicals is prohibited, because it can harm a person.

The most experienced farmers, who have already encountered such a problem as the appearance of slugs in their beds, already know what exactly will help in getting rid of pests. Analyzing numerous reviews on the Internet, we can state the fact that the most popular means of combating this type of pest is salt; it is this folk method that most effectively helps destroy slugs. Also collecting pests by hand. It's safe and effective. The least popular among gardeners is the extermination of slugs by chemical means, due to the danger of berries or vegetables poisoned by chemicals getting on the table.