Readers' Garden Secrets

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My young son and I discovered that ants do not like to cross chalk lines. To deter ants from entering our apartment building we drew a 1" thick chalk barrier across the patio. Also, we thought maybe the reason ants didn't like crossing chalk was that it was "sharp" to their tiny bodies---it is just ground up minerals.

We thought talc might have the same effect. We tried baby powder. The ants never came back. May have been a combination of the talc and the fragrance may have disguised their trail/food source.

I am living here in Maidstone, England and battle every summer with slugs in the garden, BUT I have found the remedy to all of your pesky problems with slugs whether it is large or small.

There are countless remedies on the market which range from Nematodes to beer to harmful poisons and concoctions that I would not trust alongside my herb garden that is used for cooking and eating.

I stumbled upon this sure fire remedy one day purely by chance and it has been the saviour of my garden. It closely resembles the attractive properties of beer but at an incredible rate without harmful poisons or expensive nematodes....what is it? If you use beer, you will attract a few, but you have to keep replenishing the beer everyday to keep it fresh and attract the slugs.

Take a trip down to your local bakery and tell the butcher that you want to purchase some of his bakers yeast, or you can find it in your local grocery store if they carry it. You have to have fresh bakers yeast, it comes in a block and looks like white putty...dry yeast will not work.

Take the block of yeast and cut off a chunk, mix it in warm water, add salt, and set it on your back patio or near your garden. If you think about the beer remedy, you will discover that the slugs are not attracted to the beer, but the smell of the yeast in the beer.

I discovered this remedy one day after baking fresh bread with fresh brewers yeast and then decided to leave a piece of it out for the birds. I left it for about an hour and before I knew what had happened, there were hundreds of slugs making a bee line dash for the bread....EUREKA! It's the yeast I said! I then went out and picked up each one with a scoop and put them all in a jar of salt water and that was that.

Be prepared...if you use this remedy, you will have to keep checking it every hour cause if there is a slug within a hundred yards of your garden, you will attract it.

I just finished reading your article about slug control and thought I'd pass this tidbit along.

I'd like to suggest that a generous sprinkling of fresh (unbrewed) coffee grounds has, for the past two years, allowed me complete control of grubs.

The first year I had tried ferrous phosphate and achieved partial control. However, a few weeks later, the problem returned. I did not want to continuously add this chemical to my soil because I did not want to have a build up of it. So, on a hunch, I tried the coffee grounds and got control that lasted the balance of the season. This spring, I waited for the first signs of trouble and re-applied the coffee grounds.

I have not seen any slug damage or trails since.

This builds on research conducted by the University of Hawaii into the effect of caffeine on amphibians.

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