Slugs on hostas will spoil the look of your hostas, so you must do whatever you can to get them off your hosta garden.

Slugs on Hostas

Thankfully, slugs in the garden are easy to find and repel, so your hostas can be safe so long as you stick to recommended and effective methods.

For the best ways to remove slugs from your hosta garden, read this article.

What Are the Best Methods To Remove Slugs in Your Hosta Garden?

The best methods to remove slugs in your hostas garden are hand-picking them off the garden immediately, monitoring your garden twice daily, covering your hostas, and using recommended pesticides. Aside from these, there are so many other ways to get rid of slugs.

1. Remove Wastes and Debris From Your Garden

Slugs go to your garden because they are looking for food. They do eat hosta leaves but prefer to eat other organic items in the garden that are easier to find.

Remove Wastes and Debris From Your Garden

This means that the more debris you have in your garden, the more likely slugs will visit your garden. To stop slugs from entering your garden, keep the garden clean.

Do you remember the last time you thought about cleaning your garden? Do you allow leaves to decompose in the garden? What about food waste and your compost pile? Do you protect them from pests properly?

2. Use Copper Barriers

Copper is an element with anti-microbial and anti-slug properties, so you can place copper barriers such as copper wire, copper tape, and other products around the hostas. Concentrate more on the base of the plants and other parts that reach the ground because slugs attack hostas from below.

Is your garden free from slugs? Are you sure that the pests are coming from outside the garden? If yes, you should coat the base of your fence with copper to prevent the slugs from entering your garden.

3. Water Your Hostas Early Daily

Slugs love moisture, so you will always find them in moist parts of your garden. To prevent slugs from going to your hostas, you should make their path undesirable for them. You can do this by ensuring that the soil around the hostas is dry.

Water Your Hostas Early Daily

If you water your plants early in the day, the topsoil around the plants will dry out quickly and become undesirable for slugs to pass through. Don’t worry; your hosta roots will have sufficient moisture below the topsoil so long as you remember to water them daily. Just make sure that your garden topsoil is not wet as night approaches.

4. Employ Natural Predators

Slugs may be pests in your garden, but you can always give them a taste of their own medicine by employing predators to control them. You should encourage natural slug predators such as birds, frogs, toads, lizards, etc. To control the slug population in your garden. Most of these predators will not harm your plants.

The best predators that you can use in your garden for slugs are frogs and toads, as they are most active during the periods of the day and months of the year when slugs are active. They will also control the population of other pests, such as insects and nematodes.

5. Control the Slugs Organically

Some people say that sprinkling crushed eggshells on your garden repels slugs. Well, there’s no proof of this, as slugs can easily crawl on eggshells. However, you can sprinkle diatomaceous earth around hostas or use other products such as iron phosphate, coffee grounds, and citrus peels. 

A slight con of many organic slug repellents is that their effects wear out quickly. However, they do work and are effective when fresh. You can get iron phosphate from gardening stores. Do not be worried when using it, as it is completely safe for your plants and pets.

6. Cover the Hostas Daily

If you want to totally eliminate the chance of slugs attacking your hostas, an awesome slug control method is to cover your hostas plants with a breathable material such as loose fabric or wire mesh.

So long as the material is semi-permeable but its holes are too small for slugs to pass through, you can make use of it.

7. Make a Bear Trap

Beer traps are very effective, and people have been using them for a very long time. Beer has barley and other ingredients that attract slugs, so pour beer in wide bowls around your garden to attract slugs. When you check the traps in the morning, you will see drowned slugs in them.

8. Make Use of Cucumbers

Keeping slugs in your garden is easy when you use traps that they love. Slugs love cucumbers, so slice some cucumbers and place them very far from your hostas.

Make Use of Cucumbers

If you can, check the cucumbers every hour or two, especially at night, to handpick and dispose of the slugs.

9. Remove the Slugs on Your Hostas Immediately

To prevent pests such as slugs from damaging your hostas, remove them from the leaves immediately after you see them.

Do not wait an extra second before you remove the slugs so that they do not cause further damage.

10. Grow Your Hostas on Raised Beds

If you want to stop slugs from reaching your hostas, one cool way is to grow the hostas as far from the slugs as possible. The topsoil in raised beds dries out quickly, and slugs do not like dry soil, so they will likely turn back and attack plants outside of the raised beds. 

To make your raised beds more effective in repelling slugs, you can coat their frames with copper and other anti-slug products. If you like, you can sprinkle diatomaceous powder just around the raised beds.

11. Make an Ammonia Mix

An ammonia mix is a very cool product that you can use to repel slugs, as ammonia burns slugs. All you need to do is to create a mixture of 10-part water and 1-part ammonia. You can easily get ammonia from gardening or chemical stores very close to you.

Aside from the fact that an ammonia mix will repel slugs, it is also very beneficial to your hostas. This is because ammonia becomes nitrate which gives nitrogen to your plants. If you see your hosta leaves turning brown with holes after using the ammonia mix, you may be using too much ammonia in the mix, so reduce the quantity.

12. Buy Slug Repellents

Just in case you have tried all the natural or organic methods to repel slugs and no one is as effective as you want, you should head to a gardening store. When you reach the gardening store, search for slug pellets and other products that can repel or kill slugs, such as sluggo.

Please be sure to stick to the instructions as written in the product manual. Also, stop using the product if you can see harmful side effects on your hostas and other plants in your garden.

13. Check the Hostas Once or Twice Daily

What if you have never seen slugs in your garden before? You might have concluded that slugs are in your garden because of the visible holes on hosta leaves. If you want to see the slugs in action, you need to check your garden at times of the day when slugs are most active.

Check the Hostas Once or Twice Daily

Slugs prefer cool periods, so they will mostly attack your hostas at night. You do not have to check your garden at night. All you have to do is check the garden early in the morning or late in the evening. When you check your garden at dawn or twilight, you will find all the nocturnal pests attacking your plants.

14. Be Attentive in Spring and Fall Months

Just as slugs prefer cool periods of the day, that’s how they prefer cool and humid seasons of the year. This means that you will mostly see slug damage in your garden in the fall and spring months. You should double your slug-prevention efforts when the fall and spring months arrive if you want to grow slug-free hostas.

This does not mean that you should neglect your garden in winter or summer. Winter and summer months are the perfect months to search for the slug hiding places. Search the bushes and under the rocks in your garden for slugs and eliminate them before spring or fall comes. 

Conclusion

Slugs are truly harmful to hostas, but you are well-prepared for them, as you have read this article.

Here are some reminders from the article that will help you take care of your hostas in a better way:

  • One cheap way to stop slugs from reaching your hosta plants is by covering the plants with a breathable material at night.
  • Just in case you find slugs around your hostas, handpick them and dispose of them quickly.
  • Use slug attractants such as cucumbers and beers to stop slugs from going to your hostas.
  • Slugs prefer humid and cool periods, so they will attack your hostas mostly in the spring and fall months.
  • Just in case the natural or organic methods do not work, go to a nearby store and buy a good slug-repelling product.

Now, you can handle the slugs eating hostas, right? Remember to be more attentive to your garden in the spring and fall months.

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