Today I did something that I’ve never done before. No, I didn’t hike to the top of a mountain, or sky dive, or scale boulders… I trimmed my hostas. The wonder and magnificence wasn’t in the trimming, itself; it was in the fact that there were hostas to trim at all… in September!
If you are a gardener and you have hostas, you know that you are not the only one who loves these lush plants. So do snails and slugs!
When we moved into our house 5 years ago, I was delighted to inherit a shaded area in which to cultivate shade-loving foliage! There were so many shade-loving plants that I had never been able to install in the sunny yards of previous abodes.
Of course I set straight to work on a Pinterest page devoted to shade-loving plants! I was going to have it all! My head was filled with visions of lush hostas tucked in among dainty ferns, beds of impatiens, and graceful Lilies of the Valley. Hostas have a reputation for being hardy and low maintenance, perfect!
Well, not exactly. Hostas, themselves, are low maintenance; but I quickly learned snails and slugs will munch them to nubs almost overnight! How heartbreaking! I began to research how in the heck to get rid of these sneaky, slimy creatures that ate whilst I was sleeping the night away. I never actually saw the little critters, but they were there, alright.
I read about store-bought and homemade remedies. I tried the store-bought versions first. No improvement. I tried a few home brews. Nada. So, for the past several years my hostas have sprung up every spring, like the dutiful perennials that they are! But before long the slugs munched down on the succulent leaves like the persistent pests they are! I couldn’t stand to walk by this garden and see the hosta leaves full of holes; and sometimes entire leaves were gone! So, each year, rather than suffer the depressing view anymore, I’d just cut the hostas down to a nub by mid-summer. Last summer I swore that I was going to uproot every single hosta this year and plant something else altogether.
But I kept reading about some sort of “beer” remedy. Sounded too weird to be true. As a last resort I decided to try it.
I had read that all you needed to do was pour a little beer into a shallow plate or bowl and set it around the garden. The first time I tried this, and went out to see the next morning, sure enough each plate was full of dead slugs! What? Really? The little lushes! They drank themselves into a drunken stupor! (Actually, I think they are attracted to the smell of the beer, and then they drown… but I prefer the idea that they died a happy, inebriated death!). Gives a whole new meaning to the song “Garden Party.”
The only problem with this setup was that debris from overhead trees, as well as rainwater, mucked up my beer ponds. I needed something with a cover. So my husband devised some handy dandy slug traps from used, plastic Starbucks Iced Coffee containers (and believe me, there is no shortage of these empty containers at my house!)
Voila! Perfect size to have one (or two!) at the base of each hosta! Their little green caps help them blend right into the landscape. (I use three 16-oz cans of beer for 15 traps.)
I have to admit, shortly after establishing the “beer garden” I came to realize that this slug trap method was not exactly low-maintenance. The slug traps needed to be re-filled more frequently than I liked. And because I had no waist-high surface on which to work (in my front yard) I found it to be more bending and stooping than I wanted to do so often. So, while my hostas were looking great I still wasn’t convinced that this was a long-term solution. (I was still considering taking them all up and tossing them…)
Then I had an idea (uh-oh!). What if I had a wheeled cart that I could roll around the garden and use as a stand to refill the slug traps? Bingo! I found this outdoor rolling cart on Amazon, and it works perfectly!
Now I can stand in a comfortable position to refill my slug traps! When I’m finished, I just roll it up against the house in a stealth location and leave it where it’s handy. (It has a drain hole in the bottom, so rainwater can drain out).
So, the story has a happy ending! My hostas are still alive and thriving in mid September, and I am thrilled!
P.S., guess what? Flies love beer too! I have the same trap on my patio table (concealed inside a pretty pot, so I don’t have to look at the floating creatures) and the flies swarm to the beer trap instead of to my food and beverage! Bonus!
