Slug and cricket success here. Simple beer bait and beer traps and coffee grounds. Almost a week of no slime trails. I'm sure there will be a return and without flashlight, diligence, and hand-plucking I'm certain my success rate would be lower. Coffee grounds have done well enough to add two new hybrids with confidence. Japanese beetles all but disappeared through no effort of my own? Odd.

Tonite I'm still wondering what happened to the Japanese beetles? Slugs were the ISIL of insect life tonite after many quiet nights a sneak assault. They hit hard, caught and killed 17. Done with the natural crap. Done. Purchasing specific poison today. Yep!

Colorado Potato Beetles.
I have not had time to get down south like normal so they are uncontrolled except for me picking them as I weed.
I had worse cases but it is annoying.
Squashed a few dozen yesterday.

Wes, Sluggo seems to work well

I'll have to hit the small hardware stores in town, Lowes claims to have an Ortho product in stock but I didn't find it. Same active ingredient but I like the name and packaging of Sluggo!

I've made pop bottle traps, cottage cheese lids, bowls with various beers from cheapo high-test 8% down to plain ol' Busch beer. Icehouse, .99 for 24 oz. has been a good lure. Drowning best achieved by plucking and tossing into the most difficult to escape bowl and blinding them with a 320 lumens tactical flashlight. I prefer drowning them in alcohol to squishing/salt etc.

I really believed the coffee grounds around the bases of my cannas was working until I found two rude slugs on the top-side of "protected" plants mocking my efforts. This tiny bed is a 3 season bloomer and I could enlarge and re-arrange for 4 season color with some dwarf spruce varieties. Whole other topic. For now the daylilies and Heliopsis seedlings own the bloom. Colors and textures adding are 7-8 varieties of canna 2' to 6' tall. These are the icing. The cake is small but the icing is always the icing. That finishes the cake. Cannas, zinnias, and nasturtium are my recipe for a wonderful Fall bloom. Slugs can't have it. Thrips are trashing my gladiolus and at least they neglected to choose daylilies. I'll gladly sacrifice the later blooming glads to save the rest of the garden.

Gotta shut up and go kill slugs!

There are two kinds of Sluggo: classic metaldehyde bait which is extremely effective where I live, kills quickly, and dying slugs leave an obvious slime trail as they flee and die. Boom, no snails.

The iron phosphate Sluggo is the newer, greener version. If I use it regularly for several days, I think I see fewer snails eventually. Never see dead slugs or a dying slime trial.

The reason anyone would use the less effective newer version is that, if you feed a big enough handful of the effective metaldehyde bait to a dog, he will get sick and might even die if he was a small enough dog. Since you would scatter that much bait over many square yards, even dedicated, hard-working very stupid dogs can't collect enough of it to hurt themselves.

I think you could pour the whole box of iron phosphate slug bait into the dog's bowl without any symptoms.

Cats are too smart to eat anything with the bitter additive they use now.

"Metaldehyde is classified by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) as a "slightly toxic compound""

"/SIGNS AND SYMPTOMS/
Chronic poisoning is practically impossible; amounts less than those that cause acute poisoning have no effect ...
[IPCS; Poisons Information Monograph 332: Metaldehyde (June, 1990).
Available from, as of October 9, 2009: http://www.inchem.org/pages/pi... **PEER REVIEWED** "
https://toxnet.nlm.nih.gov/cgi...

Acute oral lethal dose ... 100 mg/kg in humans

<I think that would be ~8 GRAMS of metaldehyde for an 80-kilo person, so you would have to eat 246 grams or over a HALF POUND of 3.25% bait to experience acute toxicity. It's toxicity is that low. If my arithmetic is correct.>

But there are many people who don't want ANY of anything called "toxic".

I think I've won the war with the ants! Haven't seen any on my patio, thanks to Spectracide Accushot.

I am my worst garden pest.
Squirrels run a close second.

tx_flower_child said:I am my worst garden pest.
Squirrels run a close second.

Ha! When I first signed up on this site, I saw the title of this thread & thought to myself that I'm my worst garden pest...thought of posting that at first & decided... Nah. I just read your post & laughed!

Grasshoppers have dessimated just about everything I'm my yard, trees, shrubs, roses, even the weeds aren't immune.

Stinkbugs! And I was even good at removing them into soapy water.

Small slugs were my worst pest this year, and slugs are not usually a problem in our area, but it was an unusually wet year. And I didn't know until near the end of August that leaving them alone would mean they would lay eggs for next year! When I read that, I went "WHAT!? Oh, No!". Guess I should have known. Didn't know what to do about them so I procrastinated and did nothing. I know what to do now and will have to start at the first sign of them next year. They completely shredded at least half my plants leaves this year.

Groundhogs and possums and deer. I'm going to have to build a covered compost bin to thwart the groundhogs and possums. The deer will get a surprise when they try to eat my hostas now. I stuck dozens of stiff wires among them. Let them bend down and hit THOSE!

Squirell, locusts, raccoons , grass and mosquitoes.. They're just frustrating

Wild hogs, at least as far as what they can get to! This year they got into my yard!

Wild hogs, at least as far as what they can get to! This year they got into my yard!

Ok, this is going cause some real eye rolling, and for those of you dealing with real critters just wreaking havoc, and damage to your beloved plants, I deserve all the abuse I may get.

I have moles, and that is annoying, But it is not my first rodeo with them. I will get them, they don't scare me. I have had racoons, who hate to be chased and screamed at repeatedly. Coyotes, Bear and a cougar or two, who just made me shake a like a little girl. I have had squirrell not only in my garden, but moved into my interior walls, to raise their family, making my company ask things like, do you have rats in your walls. I have had a pair of peacock, who loved my roof, for a few years. Blue Jays who lived 10 feet from my bed, and woke me daily for years. There seems to always be something outdoors to mess with the peace we try to build.

This year, for the first time; I have a constant relentless talkative dove or pigeon. Or maybe there are 30 of them. I have never had them before. I cannot see it or them, but I can hear them, loudly cooing. I cannot stop hearing them. The first three minutes are not bad, but after hrs of yard work, with constant relentless coo coooooooooooooooooo, coo coooooooooooooooooooo, co cooooooooooooooo I find I am a crabby irritable mess of a gardener. I could never hurt a bird for cooing, but I am pretty close to hiring a hit man to do it for me.

I know. I should be grateful they are all I have to complain about.

I know what you mean in the mornings when I get up and come outside I just want some peace and quiet and I can't hear myself think over all of the noisy birds.
Don't get me wrong I love listening to the birds just sometimes I want them to shut up.

lauriebasler - Even minor problems can be maddening. Every Spring, I have to cover the small pond with floating row cover because the damn Spring Peepers will keep me awake for weeks otherwise. I even have acoustical tiles in my bedroom window and that is not sufficient.

1,000 of them across the street in the swamp is OK because the noise is constant, but 6 in the pond chirping randomly are impossible to live with.

But I have to nominate Radar The Groundhog. He is impossible to trap. I have tried using melon slices, apples, and strawberries to lure him into the cage.

I call him Radar because if I so much as peek out of a door or window, he seems to know it and stands straight up to stare in my direction.

Then he runs back to his burrow.

I know where the main burrow is. I could drop cat poop down there. But I need to know where the other escapes are. I'm going to have to cut the overgrowth back first. I let it get away from me this year.

And the worst thing is that he probably has an opening under the toolshed I built on cinderblocks above ground.

I am considering attaching a long shop-vac hose to the exhaust of my riding mower and trying to asphixiate him, but then I would never be sure he was dead.

But at least maybe I would see where his escape burrows are...