Gardener shares ‘easy’ homemade trap that ‘works a treat’ to get rid of slugs overnight
Slugs are a gardener's enemy because, after months of lovingly raising seedlings and carefully nurturing crops, slugs can make short work of munching their way through plants, undoing all the hard work in one evening.
Gardening expert details natural ways to deal with slugs
Slugs in the garden hide under leaves in moist pockets and will eat almost anything they come into contact with.
Garden slugs are especially damaging to crops because they eat both the leaves and the fruit of plants.
Plus, damage can happen before gardeners even know there's an infestation, though chewed leaves and slimy trails are tell-tale signs.
To rid a garden of these pests, instead of using commercial treatments, some gardeners turn to homemade solutions, such as beer traps.
Taking to the Gardening UK Facebook page, one man tested out the beer trap to try and remove slugs from his garden and claimed that it worked.
Posting a picture of the results that had slugs in a container of beer Philip Karwowski wrote: “Easy beer trap worked a treat last night.”
Favoured by many gardeners, this old-school gardening hack involves filling a container with beer and burying it up to the rim in the soil near the plants that require slug protection.
Slugs can’t resist the yeasty odour found in beer and will crawl into the container and drown.
It’s thought that the smell of yeast in beer is similar to the smell of rotting vegetation and fermenting fruit, which slugs absolutely love.
Don't miss...
Monty Don shares ‘very important’ task for roses to ‘repeat flowering’ [EXPERT]
Vital plant tip gardeners ‘fail to check’ that ends up ‘killing’ plants [TIPS]
Six ‘award-winning’ summer plants to grow for an array of ‘impressive flowers’ [INSIGHT]
‘Simple’ jobs to ‘thicken’ up patchy and yellow lawns now - it’s a ‘very easy process’
All homeowners dream of having a thick, green and healthy lawn. While that isn't too hard to achieve with the right products, it can be hard to make sure the lawn stays this way with each season.
Group members from the Facebook page were also fans of this slug-removal method. Maxine Mitchell said: “Yeah I’ve tried it before it definitely works.”
Martha Williams said: “I use this beer trap all the time. It stops the slugs from eating my cabbages.”
Simon Henderson claimed: “Since using this trap I haven’t had any slugs near my plants at all.”
Gardening experts at Simply Seed noted that beer is proven to be both “effective and safe” for the control of slugs.
They claimed that “cheaper| beers seem to have a higher level of yeast content, which gives off a strong aroma and it’s this that proves to be “overwhelmingly irresistible” to the slugs.
Making beer traps for slugs is an easy DIY project, but there are some limitations to using them.
These traps only attract slugs within a limited range, so traps need to be placed approximately every square metre
Additionally, the beer or yeast solution evaporates quickly and needs to be replenished every few days. Rainwater can also dilute the solution, thereby reducing its effectiveness.