Methods for dealing with slugs in homes and basements

Have you noticed sticky paths left by slugs on the walls of your home? They cause irreparable damage to the economy.

Even one glance at them can be disgusting. And the question arises: how to deal with slugs in the house?

This article will give advice on what to do and how to get rid of pests.

Who are slugs and where do they come from?

Slugs are members of the class of gastropods. They look very much like snails, but there is no house on their back. The mollusk has four horn-like processes on its head. Slugs eat fruits and vegetables, as well as other vegetation. Slugs on the site choose places with a temperature of about 14-17 degrees.

Interesting! Molluscs live in cool and humid places. Most often, this place is the cellar.

Representatives of this type of gastropod are hermaphrodites, which means that these individuals have both male and female genital organs. Occasionally, when meeting with a partner, they fertilize each other. Round eggs are laid in the ground. At a time, one individual can lay from 10 to 40 eggs, and after 3-4 weeks a beginner is born.

Who are slugs: description, photos, varieties, systematic position

Slugs, or slugs, are called gastropods, the shell of which has been simplified or lost during evolution. These insects have an elongated, slightly flattened body that changes shape due to muscle contractions. Depending on the species in length, they reach from a few millimeters to 2 tens of centimeters. The body of a gastropod mollusk is sandy, brown, grayish, brownish, sometimes with small white and black dots. It consists of:

• a raised head with 4 long tentacles on which eyes, olfactory and shortened lip receptors are located, which perform the function of touch and recognition of taste;
• torso with a mantle on the back, inside which there is a lung, and on the side to the right - a respiratory and adjacent anus;
• legs - the lower part of the body, on which its owner moves.

What is the harm from slugs

• The greatest damage to garden and horticultural crops is caused in the dark.
• Vegetable crops act as food.
• In the damaged areas, the process of photosynthesis is disrupted, from which the garden plant can die.
• Molluscs carry spores of harmful fungi on their bodies.
• Slugs are the hosts of helminths (parasitic worms), which infect domestic animals, and sometimes people.
• If an infected individual is pecked by a chicken, it becomes infected with a pressure tapeworm. If the symptoms are not noticed immediately and the disease can be fatal.

Fighting gastropods in the country or in the garden

Slugs in the garden are perhaps one of the most common problems, which is quite difficult to get rid of. Creatures appear in a greenhouse, garden or vegetable garden, because a large amount of food is concentrated there, which they mercilessly spoil. The garden slug hides in places of high humidity: under bricks, boards, rags, wide leaves of plants, among cabbage leaves.

The following methods will help you get rid of slugs forever:

• Find a glass jar and lay it on its side in the garden. Place a couple tablespoons of corn flour in it.Leave the bait in the place where you have already seen the shellfish, and in the morning you will see many corpses on the ground around it. The thing is that their stomach cannot digest corn flour, and, having tasted it, the pest dies without having time to crawl away.

• Another effective slug remedy: Fill a few plastic cups halfway with beer. Dig in these traps so that the necks are flush with the ground. The pests will crawl to the smell and drown in traps. Your task is only to catch the "catch" regularly.

• The fight against slugs in the garden is subject to ammonia diluted with water in proportions of 1/5. Pour the resulting solution into a spray bottle and spray those plants that are most often affected by pests. This technique does not kill slugs, but scares them away. Molluscs hate the smell of ammonia, so they won't suit plants.

• An excellent remedy against these creatures is eggshells, shells and coarse salt, finely crushed in the beds. It is the lower part of the pest that is very delicate, and reacts sharply to damage from such objects.

Important! The disadvantage of this method is that the sprinkled salt can dry out the soil.

Favorite delicacy

Compared to other crops, slugs are most often found on cabbage. Especially early tender varieties can be completely spoiled by invertebrate parasites. In order not to think at the last moment how to get rid of slugs on cabbage, it is necessary to begin to protect young plants from the moment they are planted in the ground.

To do this, young seedlings should be placed at a great distance, at least half a meter, so as not to thicken and not shade the bed when the heads of cabbage begin to grow. Additional safety for each sprout can be provided with a kind of fence. To make it, you need to cut a ring out of a plastic bottle and perforate it from the upper edge with tweezers or small scissors. Sharp, uneven edges will damage the body of the mollusk if it wishes to get to the seedlings.

As soon as the head of cabbage begins to grow and the lower leaves fall to the ground, they should be cut off immediately. The aisles of plantings can be sprinkled with various fine mulch or laid out around the heads of cabbage daily fragrant wormwood or stinging nettles. Herbs must always be fresh to be effective.

Interestingly, for prevention, cabbage can be watered in the evening with hot water (no more than 50 degrees) on closed leaves. Such a procedure does not threaten the plant at all, but it will burn the pests well.

For processing slugs from garden crops, infusion of bitter pepper is often used. To prepare it, hot spice powder is insisted for two days in a liter of water, after which it is boiled. The solution that has passed the heat treatment is insisted for another day, only after that it is used for its intended purpose. It is important to take only 100 grams of the finished mixture per bucket of water, otherwise you can burn the plants. The finished product is stored in a cool, dark place. For long-term preservation on the leaves, you can add a soap solution to the mixture.

Slugs in an apartment or house

Surprisingly, an uninvited guest can also wander into an apartment or house. They easily destroy indoor plants, and bring a variety of viral diseases to the owners. We bring to your attention folk remedies for slugs.

• Slugs in the house are afraid of foods such as salt, regular instant coffee, or mustard powder. Sprinkle it on a piece of paper, and leave it in the places where nasty guests were previously noticed.
• Take regular table salt, sprinkle it along the baseboard and on the windowsills near the pots of houseplants. This method scares away gastropods and protects flowers from damage.

• Another remedy that gives a positive result is ammonia. Soak cotton swabs in this preparation and spread in those places where "snotty" traces are clearly visible. The ammonia has a pungent odor that scares off slippery creatures for a long time.
• The best means of radical action are chemicals that must be sprayed on the territory of the dwelling. The main disadvantage is that the negative impact is not only on slippery guests, but also on the human respiratory system. That is why the use of reagents is appropriate only when, after processing, you have the opportunity to go to spend the night in another place.

Interesting! If you spot a pest, you can sprinkle salt on its body. You will see how it "dries up". After that, it is necessary to remove the mollusk only with gloves.

Interesting facts about the pest

The slug doesn't look very attractive. Very few people dare to take it in their hands. The main disgust comes from the mucus that this shellfish secretes to protect its body from dust and dryness.
The mucus also helps the mollusc to move along the ground and leaves. It performs another extremely important function - protective. Some varieties of these soft-bodied molluscs have mucus that smells bad and can even be poisonous. This helps to scare off natural enemies of the slug.

It is comforting that pests that live in vegetable gardens in central Russia are not able to boast of such protection. Because of this, the fight against them is seriously simplified. The garden slug will appeal not only to toads and hedgehogs, but also to moles, storks and raccoons. However, slugs still have a shell, but it is rather rudimentary, he inherited from a common ancestor with snails.

Slug habits

These molluscs move with undulating movements, which they make with the help of a muscular leg. They cannot boast of a special speed, therefore, in the fight against a pest, this only plays into our hands. If a person has noticed several slugs in the garden, they are unlikely to have time to escape somewhere, even while the gardener goes for tweezers or gloves. The mollusks lead a rather calm daytime lifestyle, hiding somewhere in a shaded and damp place, and in the evening they crawl out of shelters and begin to devour everything that comes to them:

• roots protruding from the ground;
• plant leaves;
• fruit;
• flowers, etc.

If you closely monitor your crops, you can even completely get rid of pests by hand. The shellfish must be collected in some container, and then thrown into kerosene. It is also recommended after this to treat the plants from mucus in order to prevent fungal diseases.

Fighting slugs in the cellar

Slugs feel most comfortable in the dacha in the cellar, since it is very humid and cool in this place, and pests perceive the abundance of stored vegetables as a buffet. Remember that if condensation accumulates in the storage, then the cellar must be dried.

Important! It is not recommended to use any chemicals in the cellar, as powders and spray are easily absorbed by food.

In order to expel slippery guests from the cellar, use the following algorithm.

1. First of all, make sure that there are no preservation and supplies left in the basement. All edibles must be taken out in advance.
2. Find a large basin or any other deep container, get a smoke sulfur bomb.
3. Make sure there are no flammable objects in the room.
4. Place the lit checker in the basin, observing all precautions. Exit, closing the doors tightly.
5. For the next three days, you must not enter the room, strictly make sure that the door or hole is tightly closed.
6. After that, ventilate the cellar for several days, refresh the room, put a fan inside.
7. Scan the area, be sure to root out the attack completely. After that, you can bring the stocks of provisions back.

Protective barriers

The essence of the method is to block the path of pests. The ground around the perimeter of the site, around the beds, is sprinkled with something rough, sharp. In addition to sand, nutshells, it can be more effective slaked lime, wood ash, crushed shells of river mollusks.

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

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

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

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

I wonder what copper can help. Any copper-containing material - wire, or a covering material containing this metal, will cause a discharge of current upon contact with the mollusc.

Top 5 effective chemicals for slugs

You can treat the territory from slugs with professional chemistry:

• Meta;
• Sludge Eater;
• Bros;
• Phasmarhabditis;
• copper sulfate.

It is imperative to comply with all processing rules that are placed on vials with poison and the use of personal protective equipment.

There are special pest traps on sale. You can buy them in any gardening store, install and shake out the prisoners from time to time.

Prevention of slugs

• Till the soil in early spring to reduce the number of eggs laid.
• When watering in summer, loosen the soil thoroughly, discarding roots and debris.
• Dry damp areas, keep the beds and aisles clean.

In order to save the harvest from a slippery misfortune, all means are good. However, it is better not to start the situation so that you do not have to resort to drastic measures. Use time-tested folk remedies, and your harvest will remain safe and sound.