Commercial Products

The best know is probably the Beer-Trap as it promotes the comic vision of the creatures dying while happily drunk after being magnetically drawn to the trap by the lovely smell of beer... ggggggh! beeeer...

Sadly these traps are not particularly effective, their range only extends over a foot or two so you have to have a number of them scattered around near dark, damp places. They need constant refilling to maintain a depth in the trap capable of drowning the slugs.

Don't know about you but I don't have large quantities of undrinkable beer swilling about the house and the idea of pouring fresh beer into a plastic pot in the garden rather than into me is not one I've considered. You can use other mixtures to attract them, it's the fermented smell that attracts them, a mix of water, sugar and bread yeast will also do the trick. This will be a lot cheaper and keep the beer where it should be - in the fridge.

Other simple traps are no more that a board or upturned pot raised slightly off of the ground on stones. The gap allows the slugs access to sleep off the day in damp darkness, at which point you harvest them by picking up the board and scraping them off.

Emptying traps can quickly turn into a chore unless you are particularly driven in your mission against these creatures. Another possible disadvantage starts at the point where the trap instruction ends, what do you do with the trapped creatures? The ones that were drowned can be poured onto the compost heap or into a dark corner of the garden but what about the live ones? Dustbin, neighbours garden, what?

Crushing and leaving them in the garden makes them available to beetles, birds, frogs  and hedgehogs. While this might initially seem like a good pay-back it quickly looses its edge the first time you get spattered by body-bits. One particularly driven individual on a chilli pepper forum of which I'm a member has a special pair of secatures he calls his 'Slug Snippers'! A bucket of soapy water (not beer) can be used to collect them over a week before putting on the compost or they can be put into a plastic bag and binned if you prefer.

All these options seem a little cruel and are time-consuming for all but the very few of us who perform this ritual as part of their mission against The Slime.  The only plus point for killing them and leaving them in the garden rather than disposing of them is that they will be available to any local wildlife, attracting the beneficial creatures to perform the clean-up for you.