I am already fighing slugs!! They consumed an entire seeding of lettuce in one night. I thought it might be helpful to know more about the lifecycle and how that relates to control. For example: Am I better off controling them very eary in the season so they don't reproduce later? How about those huge 4inch long suckers that I find during the warmer months? Are they adult this years or multiyears old? Is it possible to find the eggs and destroy them? I do two nightly slug patrols with a flashlight all spring and summer long. Are they of any benefit other than toad food?

Well, chickens and the french eat slugs (they stick them in the reserved snail shells for escargot). I use iron phosphate starting early in the spring before they can mate and reproduce. They eat the iron phosphate pellets and then die, and the leftover iron just helps the soil. Win-win situation. However, it might not just be slugs. Do you have woodlice (rolly polly, armadillo bugs, pillbugs, sowbugs...)? They also do a number on plants when overpopulated.

Another thing I do for slugs and snails is to keep small flat boards and overturned melon rinds in the garden. Every morning I do a patrol, lifting them and scraping any of the nasty things into a bucket of rock salt. When I started out on this property four years ago I had slugs a foot long. Now I get a few over an inch, the rest are tiny.

I also use iron phosphate (Escar-go from Gardens Alive). It works very well. I even skipped using it one year because there were so few slugs left. I presume most of them were too dead to reproduce.