Not so long ago, slugs were the worst enemy of my flower beds and vegetable garden. They were everywhere—on my vegetables, perennials, and annuals—shamelessly eating holes in the leaves and reducing some plants to green mush. Sometimes my flower beds looked more like a shooting range than a garden. It was a disaster!
I used to go out every morning in my bathrobe to collect the intruders by hand and crush them under my slippers. Not very elegant, perhaps, but at least I felt useful. However, it wasn’t worth the effort: the more I crushed, the more there were.
Then one day, I had enough. I decided to let the slugs win!
After all, there are better things to do in life than squashing gastropods! So three years ago, I made a resolution to learn to tolerate minor damage… and to pull up plants that were too damaged to be pleasant to look at.
The strange thing is that it works well, very well even. Now, when I walk around my garden, I don’t even touch the slugs anymore. In fact, I’ve started to find them useful. It’s true!
Taming Slugs
Most of the time, they eat not healthy leaves and beautiful flowers, but yellowing leaves and wilted flowers. Only occasionally do they eat desirable plants. Except that, very often, we’re so bent on controlling them at all costs that we forget that they can be beneficial.
Removing the plant that were “too damaged” wasn’t so painful after all. Sure, it hurt to part with some of my hostas, which I had paid so much for originally, but I quickly discovered that not all of them were infested. Curiously, the most commonly sold cultivars (such as Hosta undulata ‘Albomarginata’) were the most attacked (one of life’s great mysteries: why do nurseries sell the hostas most destroyed by slugs when there are so many cultivars that aren’t?). Most of the others, however, had little or no damage. Slugs don’t seem to like, for example, hostas with blue foliage or thick leaves, nor do they like slow-growing ones. I quickly replaced the “slug-prone” hostas with sturdy ones that don’t attract them.
Adapt Your Gardening
I did the same with my other plants. Even with lettuce, another plant that slugs love, I’d already noticed that romaine was almost unaffected, whereas leaf lettuce, which is often a neighbor, was eaten up completely. So now I only grow romaine lettuce, so no more problems.
Another thing I had already noticed is that mulch seems to slow down the progress of slugs. Sure, they eventually get there, but if I apply a mulch of shredded leaves, forest compost, cocoa shells, etc., around newly transplanted or freshly sprouted plants, the slugs seem to give them a two- or three-week head start before attacking. An established plant probably develops tougher leaves, as slugs do less damage to a plant that has had time to grow a little. By systematically applying a fence around my new plants, I quickly managed to reduce the damage, even to fragile seedlings.
The Slug Hunt Is Over!
But the funny thing is that since I stopped worrying about hunting slugs, they’ve almost disappeared! No kidding. I used to squash almost a hundred a day and find just as many to squash the next day. Now, even on a rainy day, I can walk around my yard and see no more than one or two, usually eating yellow leaves.
Okay, I don’t offer them as many delicious treats as I used to, which probably scared some of them away, but where are the rest? Why don’t I have my fair share of slugs like all the other gardeners? Especially since my yard tends to be shadier and more humid than normal, which is exactly the conditions slugs love.
I have neighbors who keep complaining that they’re eating everything, which means there’s still a good population nearby.
Tolerating Them Is a Fine Solution
The explanation is simple, in my opinion: slugs are attracted to negative thoughts about them. When we start to hate them, they think it’s a sign that there must be plenty of good food around, so they come in large numbers. If, on the other hand, we start to accept them as harmless little creatures that we can let roam freely on our property, they will leave and invade neighbors with a more negative attitude.
I am now training myself not only to tolerate them, but to find them beautiful, delicate, and useful. I think that if I succeed, my positive thoughts will drive the slugs out of the whole neighborhood, or even the entire state of New York! So, if you notice fewer slugs in your flower beds next summer, you can thank me!
Larry Hodgson published thousands of articles and 65 books over the course of his career, in both French and English. His son, Mathieu, has made it his mission to make his father’s writings accessible to the public. This text was originally published in June 2001 in Fleurs, plantes et jardin.
Slugs love moisture, but did you know overwatering your garden beds can make things worse? If you water deeply but less frequently, rather than daily, the soil surface stays drier, which slugs don’t like. This small shift can help reduce slug numbers and still keep your plants healthy.
That way of thinking has greatly decreased the deer damage in my garden. So, same applies to slugs and deer.
Banana slugs eat only decaying detritus. Otherwise, they would be VERY destructive. They are huge, so likely eat a lot.
What a great reframe! Maybe a good way to think about some people! 😉