Keep Slugs Out Of Your Garden With This Clever Cardboard Hack
Sick of slimy slugs chomping on your lush garden? Then it's time to take action, and there's one trick you can try to banish these pesky slugs using some basic cardboard. These members of the mollusk family prefer to munch on vegetable plants at night when the soil is damp and cool. This can be a frustrating problem as you're not able to see the situation as it's happening. To know if you have a slug problem, you need to do a little detective work. Just because there are holes in the leaves of your vegetables doesn't necessarily mean they've been ravaged by slugs. Instead, look for irregular holes in the leaves that pop up in between the veins of the plant. Also, keep an eye out for silvery mucous trails which are a sure sign that garden mollusks are making a meal of your veggies.
Because these tiny crawlers do their feeding during the nighttime hours, you can set up a cardboard trap for them before the sun sets. For this hack to work, dampen the soil around the plants you suspect slugs are getting to. Then, lay down a piece of cardboard on top of the soil. You can lay down as much cardboard as you see fit depending on the size of your garden. In the morning, flip over the cardboard and you should see a few slugs attached to the bottom.
Why this cardboard hack works on slugs
Slugs and snails love decaying compost, moist healthy soil, as well as veggie seedlings and plants. While making their way through your bountiful garden, they seek shelter under the canopy of big-leafed plants or the shade of overgrown areas. Placing dampened cardboard over your moist soil at night will provide a seemingly safe haven for slugs to hide so they will attach themselves to it, where you should find them in the morning. When you do, you can transplant them to a forested area or anywhere far away from your garden patch. You can then repeat this method again and again until no more slugs remain.
This is a simple slug-removing hack that can be accomplished without using any potentially harmful slug repellents. Not only is the hack effective, but also extremely cost-efficient and natural. Cardboard can be found in abundance and for free if you know where to look. For starters, just put aside any of those Amazon boxes that come with your deliveries, break them down, and store them for when you need them for your gardening season. Otherwise, local grocery or liquor stores should have more than enough cardboard boxes that they're surely willing to part with if you ask nicely enough. For another environmentally friendly way to keep slugs out of your garden, you can try planting lavender or rosemary plants around your veggie patch; slugs aren't keen on these potent-smelling plants and will hopefully seek solace somewhere else.