- Who are slugs and where do they come from in the house?
- Harm from slugs living in the house
- Ways to deal with slugs, how to get rid of them Collecting the pest manually
- Catching with baits
- Folk remedies for slugs
- Chemical method of destruction
- Gentle treatment
Slugs, which are classified as gastropods, can live and feed not only in garden beds, but also inside the house. They are quite often found in private households, in apartments located on the 1st floor, especially if they have high humidity. Cellars and basements, as well as other places where it is damp and warm, are quite suitable for slugs.
Slugs both in the garden and in the house can feed on house flowers, as well as on the supply of vegetables in the cellar. The harm from them also lies in the fact that they are capable of carrying pathogens of infectious diseases.
Who are slugs and where do they come from in the house?
Slugs belong to the class of gastropods. They are identical to snails, but do not have a house on their back. On their head there are 4 processes, very similar to small horns.
During the daytime, slugs hibernate, and at nightfall they come out of their hiding places in search of food. They gnaw fruits, vegetable roots, as well as leaves and shoots of various plants.
The body of these mollusks is imperfect; they often suffer from dehydration. To avoid such an undesirable condition, they make their way into the bathroom, into dark basements and cellars, where the temperature is about +15 degrees and there is a high level of air humidity. There it is easier for their body to maintain water-salt balance.
Representatives of this class are hermaphrodites, that is, each individual is endowed with both male and female reproductive organs. When 2 slugs meet, they fertilize each other, and soon eggs are laid in the soil. A slug lays from 11 to 34 eggs at a time.
Less than a month passes after the eggs are laid, and young slugs are born from them. Having fed, young slugs become adults after 45 days; they are able to mate and lay eggs.
Thyme (thyme, Bogorodskaya herb)
Thyme also belongs to the group of aromatic oleaginous plants. Pests almost never appear on thyme - the reason for this is the aromatic substances that it releases in large quantities. It is also an excellent ground cover plant and, again, a wonderful aromatic spice and medicinal crop.
Thyme is drought-resistant and undemanding to soil, does not require intensive fertilizer, and does not tolerate stagnant water. It will benefit from regular spring pruning.
- Thyme (thyme): growing features
The spice thyme, known to many, can also decorate a flowerbed in a summer cottage.
Harm from slugs living in the house
The harm from these disgusting-looking creatures is enormous. Having settled in the house, they eat the leaves and stems of domestic plants. Slugs living in the cellar spoil the potato tubers and root vegetables of radishes, carrots and beets stored in it.
Poultry that eat slugs tend to get sick. Cattle and sheep fed hay where slugs have crawled experience digestive problems. We should also not forget that these creatures carry a dangerous infection of diseases of vegetable and garden plants.
Plants that repel slugs
Plants with aromatic essential oils repel slugs. Pests do not like strong and spicy aromas. Therefore, plants with such a smell can be used as a deterrent barrier for greenhouses, cellars, and compost heaps. They are used to compact vegetable crops or sow along the perimeter of the beds. These include:
- lavender,
- sage,
- santolina,
- thyme,
- rosemary,
- parsley,
- marigold,
- laurel,
- mustard,
- hot pepper,
- garlic.
Slugs do not like these plants. Garlic is used by manufacturers of special herbal infusions that repel slugs and snails. Infusions of garlic, hot pepper, mustard and celandine are well-known folk remedies for fighting slugs and snails, as well as other pests.
Ways to deal with slugs, how to get rid of them
If you find a slug in your home, you should not hesitate and wait for them to reproduce. We must immediately enter into a fight with them. To exterminate them, folk recipes, various traps, and also chemicals are suitable.
There are many options for removing slugs from your home or basement. Let's look at the most popular recipes for fighting shellfish.
Manual pest collection
These disgusting mollusks can be collected by hand during the day if you know the places where they sleep. After this, they are scalded with boiling water and thrown away.
Catching with baits
In practice, it has been established that slugs adore the aroma of beer. It is wise to use this to catch them by preparing a simple trap. You need to take a small rag and soak it in beer. Next, this rag is placed on film and placed where slugs are supposed to live.
After a few hours, you need to check the trap, collect the uninvited “guests” and scald them with boiling water.
Another trap can be made using any citrus fruit, such as orange or grapefruit. The trap is made like this:
- cut the citrus fruit in half;
- place it in shellfish habitats, cut side up;
- the slug will crawl inside the fruit, but will not be able to get out back along the slippery surface.
You can also build a trap using a damp rag. To do this, pour a bucket of water on the ground. If you get a wet spot, throw a damp rag over it. This will create an excellent place for slugs to spend their days. Then all that remains is to check the trap and collect the sleeping parasites.
Folk remedies for slugs
If you find any signs of slugs in your home, inspect all rooms in the house and seal any cracks or holes you find. When the entry points for mollusks into the house are closed, you can begin to destroy them using folk recipes. The most popular recipes are listed below.
Vinegar or ammonia . You need to soak pieces of cotton wool in these strong-smelling liquids and place them in places where mollusks can live. Slugs cannot stand the specific smell of these products and will prefer to stay away from it.
Mustard, salt or instant coffee . Any of these substances should be sprinkled on paper and placed near areas where slugs could potentially be found. The rough structure of these products will not allow slugs to crawl over this obstacle.
Arrangement of barriers . Slugs have an extremely delicate body surface and this feature can be used in the fight against them. If you scatter ash, crushed egg shells, coarse sand, sawdust or lime along the paths of mollusks, this will become an insurmountable barrier for them.
Use of needles . The sharp surface of pine or spruce needles pricks the body of the mollusk and causes it severe pain. In addition, the smell emanating from pine needles is intolerable to slugs.
Chemical method of destruction
This refers to the fumigation of the cellar with sulfur bombs, which are freely sold in the store. This method is very effective against mollusks, but is dangerous for humans and warm-blooded inhabitants of the house. Fumigation must be carried out strictly according to the instructions.
Before fumigation, you need to remove all winter preparations and vegetables from the cellar or other room. In addition, all openings must be sealed to prevent smoke from escaping through them. Then you need to place the checker on a metal sheet and light the fuse.
If the cellar is large enough, you will need 4 checkers. All of them need to be quickly set on fire, leave the cellar and tightly close the entrance to it. After 3 days, the cellar must be opened and ventilated well. The house should be left during this time, as the toxic smoke will rise upward and people may be poisoned.
Gentle treatment
The essence of this method is to dust the premises with a mixture of chalk and bleach. This treatment is relatively safe, but it is used when there are few slugs.
Before dusting, all products are taken out of the cellar and the cracks and holes are sealed. Slugs, after contact with this mixture, curl up and die. The owner can only collect the corpses and throw them away.
Traditional methods
You can tell that slugs have appeared at home by looking at the sticky mark on the walls or floor. The first thing to do is to examine the premises, pay special attention to windows, doors, and carefully inspect the bathroom or kitchen.
It is recommended to seal any holes through which shellfish can enter the home. Then proceed to destroy them. Pests can be controlled in different ways. The following folk methods will help you get rid of it:
- Ammonia or vinegar. It is necessary to place swabs soaked in these liquids near the places where pests are found. The smell will repel gastropods.
- Salt, instant coffee, mustard powder. Any of the products can be poured onto a sheet of paper and placed near the slugs' habitat. It is additionally recommended to sprinkle salt along the baseboards and on the window sills. The rough surface will not allow slugs to crawl over it and will irritate the body.
- Obstacles. The peculiarity of these gastropods is their very delicate body. For this reason, they cannot crawl over hard, rough surfaces, such as ash, salt, crushed shells, lime, sawdust, coarse sand, etc. You can sprinkle them along the shellfish entry points. Please note: this way you can protect your plants. Substances sprinkle around each specimen. The loose obstacle must be poured around the plant in a tight ring, without passages or holes.
- Conifer needles. Shellfish are irritated not only by their sharp surface, but also by their strong aroma.
Important: all of the listed means will only repel slugs, but not destroy them. For this, more radical methods are used, for example, chemicals.
When processing premises, it is important to take all safety measures into account, especially if food, canned goods are stored there, or people live there. After the procedure, be sure to provide through ventilation. People should not stay in the treated room for 24 hours. You need to buy not insecticides, but molluscicides - preparations that contain copper sulfate.
Preventing the appearance of slugs in the house
It's good to know how to exterminate slugs, but it's even better to take all measures to ensure that they never take up residence in your home. Below is a list of preventive actions against these mollusks:
- regularly clean the cellar and other rooms where slugs may live;
- drying and ventilating the cellar and other premises;
- before storing root crops and potato tubers in the cellar, you need to dry them a little;
- It is advisable to whitewash the walls and ceilings of the cellar with lime.
Slugs are unpleasant neighbors for people and, therefore, it is important to take preventive measures to avoid proximity to them. And if these mollusks are infested in the house, you must immediately choose the appropriate option to combat them and immediately take action.
Meet the Spanish slug
The “monster” is officially called the red slug (Arion lusitanicus) - also known as the Spanish slug, also known as the Lusitanian slug, or Portuguese slug.
If the usual garden slugs grow to 1.5-3 cm in length, then this giant can grow as much as 10-15 cm, although it is usually limited to 7-10 cm - which, however, looks no less terrifying for an unaccustomed gardener. Focusing on the species name will not always be correct - depending on the habitat, this slug can be either really bright red or red with a slightly darker head and “horns”, or a more inconspicuous gray-brown or cream (but never spotted) .
Some brightly colored specimens of the Spanish slug can be confused with the more common species, the red roadside slug (Arion rufus), which is equally large and “harmful.”
The Lusitanian slug is native to southwestern Europe (mainly the Iberian Peninsula), where it usually lives in gardens, fields or forested areas near human habitation. And it was from there that recently they began to accidentally import it into our latitudes along with soil, plants in pots, vegetables and fruits. Moreover, the Spanish slug attacks not only the countryside - the invasion of gastropod giants in the last couple of years has been noted even in such large cities as Moscow, Novosibirsk, Lvov, St. Petersburg, Riga, Tallinn... Mollusks settle in parks, cemeteries, along roadsides , crawl into playgrounds and landscaped green courtyard areas. And for summer residents this is a real disaster - red slugs are sometimes even collected in buckets from cultivated beds!
The Spanish slug is included in the list of the most dangerous invasive animal species for Europe (imported from other habitats). This pest, like a “regular” slug, is very voracious and absolutely unpretentious in its choice of food - it eats everything that small slugs do, only in much larger volumes in accordance with its size. And not only does it eat - by crawling from one plant to another, slugs contribute to the spread of various fungal and viral diseases among crops, which can cause losses to the farm no less, and often greater, than the direct harmful activities of slugs. And the giant slug has no natural enemies in our latitudes - no hedgehogs or jackdaws would be tempted by such a large creature.
In addition, the red slug reproduces very quickly in the same way (it is a hermaphrodite, so it does not need a partner for reproduction), producing several generations during the summer season (a single adult can produce up to 400 eggs in one warm and humid summer) and “leaving” for the next season of laying eggs, which are perfectly capable of overwintering in the depths of the soil - therefore, pest control in early spring and late summer is most relevant.
In addition, the Spanish slug truly threatens the health of people and animals. In addition to the fact that its mucus can be dangerous (poisonous), the mollusk is often an intermediate host for a number of parasitic worms, which as adults parasitize domestic and wild mammals and birds.
At one time, scientists hoped that the southern newcomer would not survive our harsh winters, however, as practice has shown, the mollusk has successfully adapted to a colder climate and now poses a real threat to plants.
Remedy to kill slugs
The drug "Thunderstorm" is a remedy against slugs. Metaldehyde granules are good against slugs. Slugs crawl to the place where you poured this drug. After two hours, the slug that ingested the pellets will no longer be there. The drug should simply be sprinkled on the soil in a certain place and covered with something so that slugs have access to this place. This could be a cake box without a lid or something similar. Just place the box on two sticks or a board or two bricks so that there is a passage for the slugs.
Appearance
The slug's body has three parts:
- Head . Her clam can lift up. The head is equipped with two pairs of tentacles. One of them is long, with eyes and smell receptors. The second pair is short, these are the organs of taste and touch. There is a mouth opening on the lower front of the head.
- Body equipped with a mantle . The body is stretched and slightly flattened. The mantle is located immediately behind the head on the dorsal side. In this convex collar there is a lung, and on the side on the right there is an outlet for collecting air for breathing. Near the anal exit.
- Leg . This is the outermost part of the mollusk, with the help of which the slug crawls.
The skin of a gastropod is thin, hairless and constantly covered with a special secretion (mucus), which cools the body, helps it glide and protects it from enemies. The color of the body is also protective: sand, brown, gray, brown, sometimes with small white and black spots. The sizes can be diametrically opposite. It all depends on the species, there are 2 mm ones, and there are also 30 cm giants.
Basil
Basil has a very pleasant smell for humans and an unpleasant smell for slugs, also due to the essential oils contained in the above-ground part of the plant. In cooking, this aroma is described as the spicy smell of allspice with a slightly cooling, salty taste. Thanks to its smell, as well as its rich vitamin composition and other beneficial substances, basil is one of the oldest spices and a medicinal plant long known to mankind.
The crop is propagated by seeds; it is very demanding on soil fertility, moisture, light and heat. There are more than 60 types of basil, plus almost each of them has several varieties, which can differ in both appearance and cultivation techniques.
- 10 Most Common Problems When Growing Basil
We’ll tell you how to avoid problems and eliminate them in time so as not to lose your basil harvest.
Lavender
Everyone knows that lavender inflorescences are widely used both in the perfume industry and at home to prepare aromatic teas and fragrances for clothes and linen. But if the smell of lavender essential oils acts on humans, first of all, as a calming one, then for slugs it is a strong unpleasant irritant. Lavender oil also has proven antiseptic and bactericidal properties, not to mention the fact that the thickets of blooming lavender in the area are simply a delight for the eyes.
Lavender loves well-lit areas, is very sensitive to acidity and looseness of the soil, but, unlike many other crops, it does not value frequent watering and fertilizers at all, preferring poor and fairly dry soils. The plant is best propagated by summer cuttings.
- Lavender in open ground - planting, care, propagation
Everything you wanted to know about growing lavender.
How they appear in a vegetable garden or garden plot
On your land, you need to look for slugs under large leaves, in thickets of grass, and heaps of compost. In addition, mollusks live in damp cellars, basements and cellars.
In natural conditions of the wild, land gastropods maintain by their existence the ecological equality of forest and field communities. When we transfer an infected plant from a forest, field, or steppe to our site, we ourselves provoke the reproduction of the slug in our possessions. After all, the pest very readily accepts cultivated plantings as a food source (more than 150 plants) and begins to actively reproduce in a new place.
Constantly watering the beds and flowers and maintaining moisture makes his stay even more comfortable. And favorable weather conditions (humid and warm springs, autumns and summers, mild winters) contribute to the massive takeover of human-cultivated territories by slugs.
Prevention measures
Slugs are unpleasant neighbors that hardly anyone would like to see on their property or in their house. Therefore, it is necessary to take appropriate measures in advance to protect your home from pests:
- All places where slugs can settle should be cleaned regularly.
- Before you start collecting potatoes and other vegetables, prepare the cellar - clean it and dry it.
- Every year, whitewash the ceilings and walls of the cellar, basement, and other utility rooms with high humidity.
Of course, it is impossible to get rid of slugs forever using preventive measures, therefore, as soon as they appear on the site or in the house, you must immediately begin to destroy them.
