Gardeners attempting to grow vegetables and some plants often face the unwelcome challenge of dealing with slugs. Whether in the garden or on an allotment, these soft-bodied molluscs can quickly become a gardener’s nightmare, leaving ragged holes in leaves and causing significant damage to young plants.
Slugs are nocturnal creatures that thrive in damp conditions, making them difficult to spot on a sunny day when most people tend to their gardens. But one savvy gardener claims to have found an incredibly simple remedy that solves this problem. Sharing their wisdom on a r/GardeningUK Reddit thread, a user recommended using melon to eliminate the pests for good, adding: “It’s bye-bye slugs!”
The answer was in response to a fellow gardener’s call for help on the forum. They wrote: “I’m Looking for a pesticide-free deterrent…I’m not looking to kill as there’s no point and the stuff that does harm beneficial insects and bugs.”
Many people suggested picking slugs up at dusk every evening as they start going to plants. But one Reddit user pointed out that the melon method proves to be effortless.
They said: “Get a honeydew melon. Cut in half. Eat the melon while preserving the skin in two hemispheres.
“Then go and put the melon skin in your garden near the crops, facing downwards, so it forms a dome.”
The melon should be lifted the next morning when the Reddit user said: “You will see (nearly) every slug in your garden is in that melon because they would rather eat melon than your crops.
“You can then put the melon miles away, or at least as far as possible, and it’s bye-bye slugs!”
According to the Royal Horticultural Society. the netted field slug, brown soil slug and common garden snail are some of the species most likely to be found feeding on garden plants.
Other kinds, like the leopard slug, can be beneficial to your garden. The RHS explained that these slugs don’t pose a threat to plants, and are highly territorial against other slugs.
They can, in fact, “be a gardener’s friend”.
Melon traps can be used regularly, preferably during humid periods or after rainfall, to keep slug populations in check.
A fellow forum member suggested: “My mum would similarly use grapefruit halves.”
An expert at Glenn Landscape suggests placing emptied grapefruit halves upside down in your garden. The citrus will attract the slugs that will crawl inside the grapefruits, and you can dispose of them as you like the next morning, just as you would with the melon.
Other suggestions in the Reddit thread include picking the slugs up with chopsticks at dusk and placing a jar of lager in the soil with access through the top. The gardener suggested that slugs “go in and don’t come out” and immediately stopped “hassling” their vegetables.
