I’m a gardening expert – my 70 cent trick attracts pesky slugs and then kills them

A gardening expert has revealed a trick that will get rid of your slug problem for 70 cents.

Slugs can be a huge pest in the garden, as they eat your beloved plants and vegetables.

2

2

They also reproduce very quickly and have an insatiable appetite, they can destroy an entire flowerbed in a single night.

However, you don’t have to pay top dollar for expensive products to get rid of these snails. You can make a snail trap yourself.

Lauren Liff, an expert at Dabah Landscape Designs, told us that you can repel slugs from your garden using good old cola.

She said: “Since Coca-Cola was originally used as a health drink, you may be wondering what use it has in our gardens?

“It turns out Coca-Cola can kill snails!”

Many gardeners use beer to catch slugs, but cola is cheaper and works just as well.

At Sainsbury’s you can buy cheap coke for just 70p.

It is also a much safer alternative to using pesticides or poisons.

Lauren said you can tell if you have a slug problem by looking for holes in the leaves of your plants.

She said, “They chew holes in the leaves and can sometimes eat a whole seedling.”

To make a cola slug trap, fill a shallow bowl or cup with the carbonated drink and let it sit overnight.

Lauren said: “Just like with beer, the slugs are attracted to the sugar in the soft drink and lure them into the bowl.

“The snails then enter the sugary drink and die a death similar to drowning in acid.”

You can also make a water bottle trap by cutting the top off of a plastic liter bottle, removing the cap, and turning the top of the bottle upside down so the neck of the bottle is pointing toward the bottom.

Fill the bottle with coke and wait for the snails to fall into the trap, where they drown.

Gardener David Domoney says these types of traps work best when they are somewhat concealed.

He told This Morning: “I would bury them in the ground so there’s at least an inch of it sticking out of the ground so things don’t accidentally fall in.”

To bury your traps, dig a small hole in the ground near the plants that the snails like best, then bury a small bowl so that only the liquid is visible.

“It’s like a dinner bell for the snails. When they come in, you can remove them in a humane way,” David says.

Alan Titchmarsh has been an organic gardener for 40 years, but he finds it too scary to welcome slugs into his garden.

In a recent interview with The Daily Telegraph, Alan admitted that he used to sneak into his garden with a torch, pick all the slugs off his plants and throw them over the hedge.

Luckily he has no neighbors.

Referring to the RHS proposal that gardeners “making friends with mollusks“, Alan noted, “I have a little bit of a problem with people telling me that snails are my friends.

“It’s like telling people that bedbugs and ticks are your friends. Don’t be ridiculous!”

Tips to keep pests out of your garden

• Plant plants like peppermint to repel rats.
• Place Garden Net Pest Barrierover your flower beds.
• Fill open containers with beer and place them in the ground to repel slugs.
• Spraying plants with Neem oilto repel ants, flies and spiders.
• Sprinkle your flower beds with Diatomaceous earth.
• Mix 1 tablespoon of dishwashing liquid, 10 drops of peppermint oil and 4 cups of water and spray this on the flower beds.
• Place eggshells around your plants to protect them from slugs.