Slugs wreak havoc in the garden, undoing months of hard work by munching holes in leaves and flowers.
The pesky creatures will eat almost anything they come into contact with, nibbling on both the leaves and fruit in the plants and quickly causing damage overnight.
While chewed leaves and slimy trails are tell-tale signs of a slug infestation, gardeners often don't realise their garden has been overrun by slugs until it is too late.
Instead of using commercial treatments to rid gardens of slugs, some people turn to homemade solutions. One such method is a beer trap, which lure the pests in by a sticky, sweet smell.
Taking to the Gardening UK Facebook page, one man tested out the beer trap to try and remove slugs from his garden and claimed that it had worked wonders.
Posting a picture of the results that had slugs in a container of beer Philip Karwowski wrote: “Easy beer trap worked a treat last night.”
Favoured by many gardeners, this old-school gardening hack involves filling a container with beer and burying it up to the rim in the soil near the plants that require slug protection.
Slugs can’t resist the yeasty odour found in beer and will crawl into the container and drown. It’s thought that the smell of yeast in beer is similar to the smell of rotting vegetation and fermenting fruit, which slugs absolutely love.
Group members from the Facebook page were also fans of this slug-removal method. Maxine Mitchell said: “Yeah I’ve tried it before it definitely works.”
Martha Williams said: “I use this beer trap all the time. It stops the slugs from eating my cabbages.”
Simon Henderson claimed: “Since using this trap I haven’t had any slugs near my plants at all.”
Gardening experts at Simply Seed noted that beer is proven to be both “effective and safe” for the control of slugs.
They claimed that “cheaper beers seem to have a higher level of yeast content, which gives off a strong aroma and it’s this that proves to be “overwhelmingly irresistible” to the slugs.
If you don't have the alcoholic drink to hand, you can make your own beer substitute by using one tablespoon of flour, one tablespoon of sugar and one tablespoon of yeast mixed with water.
Making beer traps for slugs is an easy DIY project, but there are some limitations to using them.
These traps only attract slugs within a limited range, so traps need to be placed approximately every square metre
Additionally, the beer or yeast solution evaporates quickly and needs to be replenished every few days. Rainwater can also dilute the solution, thereby reducing its effectiveness.
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