Get Rid of Garden Slugs or Snails Naturally

How to Avoid Garden Slugs or Snails – without Risking Your Children or Pets

The first time I planted lettuces, I was delighted when the brilliantly green leaves pushed through the black soil – they looked fabulous, and I was really looking forward to gorgeous salads.

I checked on their progress every day on my patio. (I’m NOT a natural gardener, I’ve had to educate myself).

Then one morning I woke up – to disaster. Something had eaten every last one of them!

I was devastated.

The most likely culprit was slugs or snails.  They appear in vast quantities in my garden after it rains.

Why do Snails Like Gardens?

Knowing why snails come into your garden, and knowing what they like and don’t like, can help you to control them.

• They arrive in your garden looking for food and shelter.
• They enjoy small flowers, many vegetables and crops, and even succulents. They especially like leafy veggies.

Apart from damaging your plants and veggies, they may kill fish in a pond, and even clog up pond and pool filters and pipes.

Artificial Solutions

Of course, you can buy chemical solutions which you sprinkle around your plants, to kill slugs and snails.   It’s a quick and easy solution (for us).

But I don’t want chemicals in my garden, and especially not around food I’m going to eat.

Natural Solutions

Instead, there are lots of little ways you can stop slugs and snails from eating your garden harvest.  Here are 6 methods that are effective:

1.  Make a Barrier

Slugs don’t like a bumpy or rough texture as it is difficult for them to crawl on it.

Add any of the following around your vegetables to stop snails and slugs eating your food:

• Crushed egg shells
• Sharp, small pebbles
• Grit (used for feeding chickens)
• Cocoa shells (but don’t use these if you have dogs as they are toxic to dogs).
• Lava rock
• Diatomaceous earth

This simply discourages garden slugs and snails from eating your plants, it doesn’t kill them, so this is a very eco-friendly option. You will need to replenish the barriers every now and again.

2.  Add Copper

Slugs hate copper (it gives them a bit of an electric shock), so place a strip of copper around all sides of your vegetables to make it difficult for them to enter. Or sprinkle copper fragments.

3.  Trap Them

This is my least favourite method because I don’t like to kill things.

You can purchase pre-made traps at the garden store but it’s cheaper to make your own.

If you have any of those nasty plastic disposable cups, simply cut the bottom off them and half-bury them in your vegetable patch.  Or use anything else of a similar shape.  Fill these traps with beer. They are attracted to the yeast. Grape juice also works for this. After the slugs crawl up the traps they will fall into the beer and drown. Then you discard the dead snails, and re-bait.

4.  Manual Removal

The tried and tested – though not much fun – method of picking slugs and snails out of your flowers and vegetables does work.  The best time to do this is at dusk when they seem to be most active.

I use a small spade / trowel to remove them.

5. Introduce Natural Predators

Chicken, geese, and ducks are natural predators of garden slugs and snails. So are turkeys, frogs, and birds. Introducing any of these animals into your yard is an effective way to control snail populations without using poisons and traps so it’s safe for your family and pets. But not everyone can have them at home.

6.  Use Nature

Take advantage of Mother Nature and increase the wildlife in your garden.  Wild birds love to eat slugs.  Put up birdfeeders and food around the garden to attract wild birds which will in turn keep the slug population low.

Also, instead of watering your garden in the evening, water your plants in the morning. This will make your garden drier at night, which will make it less attractive for snails who come out to feed in the dark. It’s not a total solution, but it does help.

What Do I do?

Personally, I use a mixture of manual removal and lots of birds in the garden.  But everyone’s circumstances are different, and hopefully at least one of these suggestions will be useful for you and enable you to avoid placing chemicals in your garden – and also hopefully avoid you losing food to garden slugs and snails.

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This article was originally published in 2013 and updated in February 2023