Here’s an old trick to fight off slugs and snails.
Partially bury a cup in your garden, leaving about one inch exposed. Pour beer in it. Come back the next day.
Slugs are attracted to the yeast in beer. You should find a bunch of dead slugs in the cup. (Don’t drink the beer. Slugs aren’t like tequila worms.)
“They can smell the yeast in the beer, and slugs actually follow other slugs’ slime trails,” Belfast Garden Club member Martha Laitin told the BDN back in 2012 at a talk she gave about dealing with the pests.
This method has been around forever, but some people are skeptical.
Maine Master Gardener Fred Davis says you should just pick them off your plants and dump them in a jar of salt water. You can also jack up the pH level of your soil, he said, according to Down East.
Or, can also replace beer with yeast, or yeast and sugar.
[youtube=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=moQQ-xIcqbA”]
So does it work? According to this video — which is the coolest and most disturbing thing you’ll see all day — yes it does. Kind of.
You can see that slugs are clearly attracted to the beer, but only a few fall in.
[youtube=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=51&v=cf6FHv5x3sc”]
Oh and by the way: according to a 1987 study that compared the efficacy of various brews in the ongoing struggle against slugs, Budweiser was the most lethal beer — a fact that BDN contributor Kathryn Olmstead’s own 2012 experiment confirmed.
