slug killing coffee?

I saw in another thread that someone uses coffee sprayed on slugs to kill them. Anyone else hear of or do this?

After I posted to ask her about it I thought, well Ive never seen slugs in my compost bin, and I dont remember seeing them where I just throw the grounds into the garden, hhmmmm.
I know a beer will do the same trick but thats alot more expensive than coffee and I make a fresh pot of coffee everyday so that would be another way to recycle and not just using the grounds either.

I don't know about spraying coffee, but I've been told that putting coffee grounds in your garden bed will keep the slugs away, and possibly some other repulsive creatures too. I'm a creepy-crawy-phobic, so that sounds way easier to me than catching them in a saucer of beer and disposing of it [shudder]. By the time we thaw out up here I should have enough coffee grounds to spread on most of my garden beds.

Yeah I know what you mean, all those little legs, ugh, and I hate digging and finding slugs, blech.
I think Ill give it a try the next time I have coffee left over, if nothing else I think Ill just pour it were I want it, ooOOoo maybe like a moat type thing, put a ring of coffee around each plant,LOL.

Wow, when I first read the subject I read it as if slugs were killing coffee (like dog bites man ...) Glad it is the other way around.

LOL kd!!

Coffee grounds are a great idea. I've tried beer in a saucer, but my cocker spaniel likes to help himself to the beer.

beer bites dog.... nah that doesn't work... sorry...lol.

Seriously though Katie, did the pooch ever lap up any slugs?? Or just get to the beer first and thus negating your efforts? That your pooch is a male isn't surprising....lol.

LOL, I realized how that sounded after I posted it, ah well, I chalk it up to spring fever.

It's good to know that someone else has a beer-swilling dog! My Keeshond went nuts for the beer slug traps until I heard at a garden lecture last month about the coffee grounds thing. At last I'll be able to grow delphiniums and basil. I now save coffee grounds every morning, and when the bucket is full, I go out and spread it around the plants that are slug-magnets. It's working great and saves money. It was always hard wasting perfectly good beer in those traps anyway!

This message was edited Mar 27, 2005 7:43 PM

LOL, my point exactly!! Wasted beer=bad, using something that you would throw away anyway to get those little bugers and it enriches the soil too=very very good.

You can also get coffee ground from Starbuck. I found quite a few slugs when I cleaned up the flowerbeds last Saturday. I went on a mission and called on local Starbuck stores for coffee ground. I must have hauled 100 lb of ground home and used it to top dress all the beds. That should take care of rabbits as well until the next rain, which was the very next day :-)

SLUGS>>>>>>>>>>>

When is a bargain not a bargain, when the pots of canna have slugs. Great price why didn't I look. I wintered them over and there is very little left of the bulbs but I didn't know why. I unpotted one and much to my surprise fat heathy slugs. I'm worrying over what to do so I read this thread ..

I put this morning left-over coffee in a container and as I unpotted the canna I raked the slug into the coffee. They managed to swim to the side of the container and up the side they went. About 3/4 of the way up, they became disoriented, made a u-turn, stopped, their body began to look pale and very slowly they dropped. I didn't time it but it was about 5 minutes before they were gonners.

That is what a dunkin' with coffee does, tomorrow I will be able to tell you if there were any slugs in the remaining pots. I followed the directions on the sack of Garden Safe Slug & Snail Bait by Schultz I purchased and placed a small amount on the soil surface of the remaining pots.

I didn't have slugs before the end of last summer, now I know how they were introduced into our environment.

Judy

Edited for my duh I had put Sluggo instead of Garden Safe
This message was edited Apr 4, 2005 3:00 AM

This message was edited Apr 5, 2005 1:42 PM

disturbing my morning beverage of choice is fatal to anything!

I think you will be alright if you don't have a slimy coating.

Judy

well for years I have gotten people to quit smoking by telling them that nicotine is one of the deadliest insecticides around.....now coffee!

LOL, yeah but its slow acting so it seems. I guess I was expecting the same quick reaction that I would see with salt. Glad I sprayed it all over the place. I was gonna clean out all the leaves and stuff from the rest of the beds today but my basement decided to flood again and this time we are going to call a plummer to come and correct the problem for us. We also spent the day ripping out carpet and playing with the shop vac to get all the water out. In my opinion EVERONE needs to own a shopvac even if its a little one.

Garden Safe, Slug & Snail Bait is still on top of the pots and the slugs are alive inside the pots??? This product is suppose to bring them out of hiding ...well it didn't.

Only possible thing I can think of is, they aren't awake yet from their winter nap?? Slugs do hibernate so it may be too early to use sluggo.

Judy

Edited for my duh I had put Sluggo instead of Garden Safe

This message was edited Apr 5, 2005 1:43 PM

Oops hibernation theory shouldn't be valid, since our weather has been very nice highs 50-70 lows 40-50 the last couple of weeks with the exception of 37 night before last.

Mission accomplished the last of the pots has been dumped and what tubers I thought were in good shape were salvaged, all dirt removed and sprinkled with Sevin dust, plus DE

Snail and their eggs were dumped in the coffee... as of 10 minutes ago there were still live slugs. Garden Safe must either take forever to kill the buggers, the contents of the package I have is "not right" or the stuff just doesn't work for my kind of slugs.

Judy

Edited for my duh I had put Sluggo instead of Garden Safe


This message was edited Apr 5, 2005 1:44 PM

bumping this thread up because I made an error on the prior postings

Has anyone heard if the coffee bothers any beneficial creepy crawlies??? I need my eartworms to work through this soil for me, can't afford to kill em....

Hugs

My worms are still big fat and healthy.

No adverse effect on earthworms. They might like a cup of joe occasionally.

The worm farmers I know feed em coffee, filters and all.
I have little bitty slugs and sqish em!

I use coffee grinds on so many things that I wish I drank more coffee!
The worms in my can of worms love it and every morning I chose a plant to pour my grinds plus more water on the lucky plant of the day.
I guess that is why I don't have a very bad slug problem.....The sqirrels on the other hand...don't let me get started.

LOL downscale, I know what you mean with those dag gone sqirrels, ggrr. I have noticed a big difference in the damage I started to see in my beds. I went out and sprayed every bed down as liberaly as my hands would allow. I even have a test bed and after just a couple days that bed got sprayed down too. I guess the old coffee has a really good use wich is a good thing, I hate throwing out coffee.
Now we all know you can go to starbucks or otherplaces to get the grounds, I wonder if they would have any old coffee they get rid of that they would hold, Hmmm, LOL.

Dravencat
I never thought about asking coffee shops for their ginds duhh We don't have a Starbucks near us (how is that possible you ask?) but there are other places I could get some.Thanks

Ocean City Maryland wich is a huge torist town dosnt have one either. But I havnt heard of anyone who wont give you thier trash(ie coffee grounds) if you ask. I call my local starbucks mainly because they are the closest too me and already know the weird coffee ground lady wants it. I just call them in the morning a couple hours before I want to pick it up and they dump all the grounds and filters into one bag for me. Pretty easy.