A natural, safe way to get rid of slugs with neem oil
The growing season is upon us, and with it come the slugs!
If there is one pest that gardeners everywhere strive to find a solution for getting rid of, it has to be the slug.
They love our damp, clay soil, hiding under our hedges and coming out at night to feast on our lettuces and other leafy crops.
Natural cures
Luckily we’ve discovered our own natural, effective and safe remedy. It doesn’t use any toxic chemicals, so will not harm children or pets. It doesn’t destroy the soil or the environment and it doesn’t play on our conscience too much as it doesn’t actually KILL the slugs; it interferes with their breeding pattern. The less they can breed, the less slugs you have in your garden.
Neem
Our wonder ingredient is neem oil. Extracted from the neem tree in India, it is a potent product containing azadirachtin - a powerful insecticide. The tree has no known pests and the oil smells like old onion soup! You can use it on your skin and hair and even take it internally, so it’s perfectly safe for spraying on your crops.
Controlling slugs
To get rid of slugs:
Mix together 2 tbsp neem oil
1 ltr hot water
1 tbsp of washing liquid (the stuff you put in a washing machine, not the stuff you wash dishes with)
Really agitate the mixture vigorously until all the neem oil is dispersed into an emulsion.
Spray away on all the plants you don’t want your slugs to eat!
Simple and effective
It’s simple and effective. If it rains, simply re-apply. You can use it as often as you like with no ill effects, but we use it weekly or fortnightly while the seedlings are at their vulnerable stages. Once the plants are established, we stop using it.
What about you - how do you get rid of slugs in your garden?
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Hi I’m Adam. I was a Bio Science Researcher for about 10 years. Presently I’m publishing articles about the Bio-pesticides and discovering best and effective Bio-pesticide products around the world for better organic farming. Neem Oil has been considered as the effective Bio-pesticide due its azadirachtin constituent which has also been mentioned in the above content. But People have no idea about How much ppm of azadirachtin is required for effective pest control. Here is the answer for that. Neem oil with Azadirachtin 3000ppm is found to have the best pesticide quality. So I suggest farmers to use product contains 3000ppm of azadirachtin for better Organic Farming and gardening.
@Adam Teaser: Hello Adam, welcome to the site and thank you for sharing your knowledge with us. Good luck with publishing the articles.
This page and article were a great find. Mrs Green, I have a quick question, when you mentioned 1 tbsp of washing liquid (the stuff you put in a washing machine), does it matter what the concentration or brand is? As an example, some detergents are concentrated, would i still use a tbsp spoon? Is there a reason that”dish” soap shouldn’t be used.
Thanks
@Ash: Hello Ash; I think you could use dish soap as an alternative, and no, the concentration doesn’t matter. It’s simply there as a dispersant, not as an active ingredient
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