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slug pub: drown them in drink...

 
steward
Posts: 3999
Location: Wellington, New Zealand. Temperate, coastal, sandy, windy,
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I thought this article was already here.
Anyway, here's my version of the ' slug pub':

Milk containers are good-I can just pick them up by the handle to tip out the corpses.
I'm cheap, and too wimpy to ask a bar for their beer dregs (what if they think it's for me )
I've used a can of cheap beer and topped it up with warm water, bread yeast, yeast spread, sugar and a little flour for the yeast to feed on.
I want it to get yeastier and yeastier!
I've been getting lots of slugs, and quite a few earwigs.
I'm ok with the earwig 'by-catch'; they tend to get a bit out of control by the end of summer.
 
pollinator
Posts: 3844
Location: Kent, UK - Zone 8
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Worth mentioning that you can also teach chickens to eat slugs... trap them in your beer trap and then feed them to the girls. We had a bunch of dreadful beer left over from a party. It sat in a cupboard for years not getting drunk. Eventually it went to dispatching slugs.

Leila's tip of adding yeast and getting a bit of fermentation going is a great one. I believe they are attracted to the CO2, so you want to keep the fermentation going over the long term. Cheap beer goes flat after not very long and stops working so well.
 
Leila Rich
steward
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Location: Wellington, New Zealand. Temperate, coastal, sandy, windy,
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Pub update.
I stopped using yeast spread straight away; aside from it probably being a pointless addition,
I imagine the high salt content could retard the yeasty action I'm after.
I've tried a few versions:
No beer at all, just yeast, flour, sugar, water.
Result-rubbish. I got a few, but I think they were just wandering past and fell in.

I thought I'd try a specifically earwig version by squirting a couple of fish oil capsules into the mix
('they' often say to make earwig traps out of fishy cans...)
Result-less than in the 'standard' slug pub.

I got over myself and asked about collecting beer from a local bar's spill trays,
but of course they clean everything at the end of the night, and they're not saving me old beer

So for now it's cheap beer, flour, yeast, sugar and a little warm water.
 
Hey, sticks and stones baby. And maybe a wee mention of my stuff:
permaculture and gardener gifts (stocking stuffers?)
https://permies.com/wiki/permaculture-gifts-stocking-stuffers
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