slug slime

Wear gloves-or wear disposable gloves

Yep, wear gloves.

And it's been proven that they do head straight back.

It's quite an extraordinary substance. Normal washing simply doesn't touch it. I'm surprised it doesn't have some important commercial application.

I use gloves, but it makes a mess of them, so best keep some old gloves just for that purpose. The gloves need to be fairly thin too, to allow a good sense of feeling, otherwise it can be difficult to detach the slug from the plant, without dropping it.

Slugs and snails have a very good sense of smell, the slime they secrete is to alert other slugs and snails to where the good feeding spots are, and so that they can find their way back.

I admire your good intentions of moving them to a patch where they can roam free but in reality they'll find their way back quickly unfortunately.

I've found that wetting your hands with cold water then rubbing with plenty of salt works quite well, then rinse with cold water again.

just a thought but how about someline like vasaline put on your hands first to act as a barrier cream?

I have taken to dropping my snails into a bucket of salty water to dispatch them to ensure they dont come back!

 i have mentioned my bucket of snails a couple of times. This was collected in an alarmingly short period of time

Wear gloves - I lob mine into the allotment behind the house, on the basis there are far more tastier leaves there than in my garden so assume they don't want to sliver back across a cobbled back street 

Water on it's own makes the slime worse, so rub off as much as you can with dry paper towels, then dampen one with white wine vinegar and salt to wipe the remainder off, before washing with soap and water.  Or, a lot easier, dedicate a cheap pair of garden gloves to your slug-lobbing pursuits!

I'm with Sparklepinksunflower on this one. Plastic freebie teabag -out- of -pot extractor (No touching slimy critures for me!) and bucket of salt water!

I use leftover plastic cutlery from Christmas. The forks are quite sharp, so just fork them and bag them. Or spoon them out the dirt. Then throw the fork/spoon away when done.

Sparklepinksunflower, where will you empty that bucket when done? I'm curious!

Empty coffee jar, salt water, use the lid, easy as,

Sparklepinksunflower wrote (see)

 i have mentioned my bucket of snails a couple of times. This was collected in an alarmingly short period of time

Thats amazing.. Where did you dispose of that? I read a post this mornng about mixing flour and water in a dish that you sink to ground level in the border and it attracts slugs. Im going to try it. I'll try and find it again and try and put it in as a quote

diggingdoris wrote (see)

The flour and water is working. I emptied the pot this morning to find ovewr 20 slugs and 2 more snails. A bumper catch for last night! Some of the slugs were just small about 1cm long but other sizes up to a 3inch one! I'm well chuffed and the delphiniums are still standing. Hurrah!

diggingdoris wrote (see)

A piece in my local paper suggests sinking any plastic dish ie. marge pot for example into the soil, then adding 2 tablespoonsful of flour and filling it up with water. A great slug trap she says. I've done one today near my delphiniums. I'll let you know if it works.

 Sorry got quotes wrong way round read the bottom one first

I still dont know where to put the dead slugs tho... I cant stand touching them and as for stabbing them with a fork yuck... I think the bucket with salt water I can manage with throw away gloves but dont know what to do with them after..just had a thought would the birds eat them?

We lob the snails on our lawn by the bird feeders and the birds come and eat them (hopefully most of them as we keep finding empty shells).  My partner cuts the slugs in half with a pair of scissors - yuk - but then they don't come back!

summerpots wrote (see)

I still dont know where to put the dead slugs tho... I cant stand touching them and as for stabbing them with a fork yuck... I think the bucket with salt water I can manage with throw away gloves but dont know what to do with them after..just had a thought would the birds eat them?

They might do-but then might not go for the salty taste-and you may then have a lot of yuccy slugs laying about-you could just dig a hole,say a prayer, and bury them

I've known about beer traps for ages but I usually went for the bucket of hot soapy water and going out with a torch at night.  Next day I'd empty all the dead slugs down the drain in the road.  (Clearly this doesn't work for snails though - they'd block the drain).  However, messy job.  Now I've actually got the beer trap going and am amazed at how efficient it is.  Every night 20 or 30 dead slugs in the beer - no effort.  I leave it for two days and put the small amount of beer and resultant slugs in the compost bin.  That seems to be working OK.  The beer is just Tesco's Value beer - 4 tins for around £1.

I am into the salty water bucket method and had a wonderful time lobbing them in today