The Overlooked Mistake That Makes Copper Tape Less Effective At Repelling Slugs & Snails

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Few things are more frustrating for a keen gardener than slugs and snails. They do tremendous damage, and unlike caterpillars, they never turn into beautiful butterflies! There are numerous ways to deal with them, of course. You can pick them off and dispose of them, but you need to be careful because there is one garden snail you should never touch. Even with the safe ones, you can't keep it up all day and night. You can use pellets, but more and more people shy away from introducing poisons to the garden. There's a WD-40 trick for keeping slugs and snails out of your plant pots, but unfortunately, one ingredient is considered a toxin.

Using copper is an alternative that's safe and can be very effective. It appears that when slug or snail slime contacts the metal, it creates a reaction that they find especially unpleasant, so they usually turn away. Gardeners can take advantage by using copper mesh (which can also be good protection from rodents), copper wire wrapped around plant stems, copper slug rings for individual plants, and self-adhesive copper tape for raised beds, planters, and pots. However, there's an overlooked mistake some people make with copper tape that leads to it being less effective, and that's to use strips that are too thin. So, in order to make sure copper tape does repel slugs and snails, we need to explore what the problem is in more detail.

The problem is a question of size: that of the tape and of the slugs and snails. Thinner copper tape will usually have some effect, with small slugs and snails typically stopped by the barrier. However, larger mollusks (the scientific name for all slugs and snails) are typically able to stretch across thin tape, arching their body away from the offending metal strip. In some cases, particularly large slugs will ignore the tape completely and appear entirely unaffected. However, you can usually expect that the copper tape will become more effective as the width of the barrier is increased.

Kraftex 2-Inch Copper Tape is available from Amazon and is very popular. It sticks to wood, plastic, and terracotta, so it has a multitude of uses. If you find the slimy critters are still making it to your plants, just add a second strip to make it wider. There are lots of tips for keeping slugs and snails out of your garden, but copper tape, when properly applied, remains one of the most affordable and least harmful ways to repel them.