What's going to kill the slugs but not the children?

[Murtette]

So we've come back from holiday & the slugs have decimated most of the vegetables. I picked them all off only to go out this morning to see that their friends have come back and had a go at the remaining leaves. Normally, I'd scatter slug pellets around so that the veg patch becomes a sea of blue but I have a very inquisitive 12mth old who puts everything into his mounth and his usually wiser 3yr sister tends to copy him. What can I do?

nematodes

My DH would say to try pots of beer, apparently slugs are attracted to it,fall in and drown. We have yet to try out this theory in our garden but though our DCs are older we have an old dog and a young pup who eats everything(including slugs and snails, nice!) so are going to try it out. Obviously we then need to make sure no one tries the slug-beer cocktail!

Pots of beer "dug in" do work. Just 3-4 the size of a yoghurt pot scattered about. Unfortunately you then have to fish the slugs out afterwards.

Slugs will lurk under grapefruit/orange skin. Then you just have to deal with them. Cutting them in half works. No, I couldn't do that either. Usually chuck them in the field behind but they probably come back the next evening.

The slugs were eating our strawberries, the beer sorted them out!

Broken up eggshells protected my hosta, but you may have to get through a lot of eggs to do a protective ring around all your plants.

Won't kill them though, just a deterrent.

Beer traps, eggshells, if you've got a fire an ash ring around the base of plants can help (needs redoing regularly though)

If you're really angry with them value salt them at dusk when they're all out!

Another vote for nematodes here!