User avatar
rainbowgardener
Super Green Thumb
Posts: 25279
Joined: Sun Feb 15, 2009 6:04 pm
Location: TN/GA 7b

No slugs!

The leaves on my pepper plants have been getting all eaten up with little to medium sized holes in them. I thought for sure it was slugs. So in the great tradition of cynthia, I went out at 1:30 in the AM armed with a flashlight, a bowl full of hot salt water and tongs, prepared for slug hunting.

Lo and behold after much searching, not one single slug to be found or any other visible pest.

So what is eating my pepper leaves? Or why couldn't I find the slugs?

cynthia_h
Super Green Thumb
Posts: 7500
Joined: Tue May 06, 2008 7:02 pm
Location: El Cerrito, CA

Do you have any lilies? or other plants with sword-type leaves, including the deep V?

I planted Amaryllis belladona bulbs ("Naked Ladies") in September 2008. These plants send up their leaves in the spring; their flowers in August. This being their second spring in this location, we got the full leaf display.

Three weeks ago, I did a full-on snail hunt, and got over 100 snails. Then I went out the next day, in a late-season rain and poor daylight, and took another look.

:shock: SLUGS!

Where? Lying in the V of the leaves, toward the bottom of almost every leaf, where the cluster of leaves emerge from the bulb. Small slugs, brown with black stripes. Blecch, as Charlie Brown would say. Trowel time....

It has rained a few more times--which is good from the standpoint of water in the reservoirs and the hillsides not drying out to give us a May/June fire season, but which plays havoc with planting things, b/c rain in northern California is accompanied by cold fronts. And snails. And slugs.

If you have any V-notched leaves (also called "straplike" in Sunset), see if the little demons are hiding out there. Leaf miners tend to produce a different pattern of destruction...

Cynthia H.
Sunset Zone 17, USDA Zone 9

User avatar
rainbowgardener
Super Green Thumb
Posts: 25279
Joined: Sun Feb 15, 2009 6:04 pm
Location: TN/GA 7b

Yup, definitely have a bunch of lilies getting pretty tall and leafy, not to mention some daylilies... They aren't in the same raised bed though. My raised beds are tall boxes and that's where the peppers are. Seems like a pretty athletic slug to zip out from the lily leaves cross a path, a low raised bed, some patio, climb the box, eat the pepper leaves and then zip back before I can find it.

I will check the lilies some night though...

The pepper leaves look so much like slug damage. And last year (much rainier) my peppers looked like that and I know it was slugs, because one time we opened up a pepper and it had a bunch of slugs hatched out INSIDE it! eewww!! So it just mystifies me that I couldn't find a single one. That bed is not mulched yet, so no place for them to hide.

User avatar
applestar
Mod
Posts: 30514
Joined: Thu May 01, 2008 7:21 pm
Location: Zone 6, NJ (3/M)4/E ~ 10/M(11/B)

They might be between the soil and the sides of the raised bed. I think it's time for a grapefruit 1/2 or an orange wedge lure. They really like them. Leave them on the ground where it'll be shaded (you could put a pot over it). Also, like hendi_alex mentioned last year, they REALLY seem to like clay pots or shards.

Tigerlilylynn
Cool Member
Posts: 77
Joined: Sat Feb 13, 2010 5:03 pm
Location: Middleburg Hts., OH

rainbowgardener wrote:my peppers looked like that and I know it was slugs, because one time we opened up a pepper and it had a bunch of slugs hatched out INSIDE it! eewww!!
Nightmares for life. >_< Cabbage I expect them but INSIDE A SEALED OBJECT!?!?!?!?!

Toil
Greener Thumb
Posts: 803
Joined: Tue Jan 05, 2010 4:18 pm
Location: drifting, unmoored

I have never observed a slug eating the leaf of a nightshade.

I always figured they just don't.

Fruit, yes. Leaves, no. Never looked it up.

User avatar
Ozark Lady
Greener Thumb
Posts: 1862
Joined: Tue Jan 05, 2010 5:28 pm
Location: NW Arkansas, USA zone 7A elevation 1561 feet

Tobacco is a nightshade plant, and slugs are the worst enemy of tobacco until it gets up good sized, then it becomes hornworms and other cutworms, but small tobacco is slug fest!

I have plants outside hardening off, and yes, I see slugs have been having lunch on the tobacco seedlings. Time to go on a slug rampage! Egg shell time too.

I even found slugs on the barn wall!

a0c8c
Greener Thumb
Posts: 706
Joined: Mon Jun 22, 2009 3:00 pm
Location: Austin, TX

You'd be surprised how "fast" slugs and snails get around, and they'll travel great distances for their size. One night after it rained, my wife went out and our poor little potato plants were covered from top to bottom with snails. Every square inch of leaf stripped clean from the stems.

Toil
Greener Thumb
Posts: 803
Joined: Tue Jan 05, 2010 4:18 pm
Location: drifting, unmoored

Ozark Lady wrote:Tobacco is a nightshade plant, and slugs are the worst enemy of tobacco until it gets up good sized, then it becomes hornworms and other cutworms, but small tobacco is slug fest!

I have plants outside hardening off, and yes, I see slugs have been having lunch on the tobacco seedlings. Time to go on a slug rampage! Egg shell time too.

I even found slugs on the barn wall!
does the tobacco maybe not make its toxin before it's of a certain side? I've seen devoured tomatoes, and not a single nibble on the leaves. Peppers and eggplants same thing.

User avatar
Ozark Lady
Greener Thumb
Posts: 1862
Joined: Tue Jan 05, 2010 5:28 pm
Location: NW Arkansas, USA zone 7A elevation 1561 feet

My son discovered my "secret slug arsenal" today, quite by accident!

I have alot of tin, and well to store it. It is in a trailer, up off the ground etc, to discourage snakes. Well, my son needed some tin, and he went to the trailer and moved a sheet of tin, and low and behold he found ring neck snakes, not one or two, but several, he only caught 4 of them, but still that is alot of snakes in one place. So much for the theory that the tin in the trailer was up off of the ground and therefore not going to hide snakes.

I told him to put them safely in the cages in my garden, so the chickens wouldn't eat them all up. I just looked them up and their preferred food is SLUGS! I want some more snakes!

Yes, tobacco does not have much nicotine content until it blooms, or gets mature enough to bloom. All nightshade plants have some (nicotine?) whatever it is that they use for protection and all these plants will manufacture by products to get rid of pests. You can actually grow tomatoes, peppers, potatoes, eggplant or tobacco as grafts on the others.



Return to “Organic Insect and Plant Disease Control”