Slugs can turn a promising garden into a midnight buffet, leaving ragged holes in lettuce, seedlings, hostas, and other tender plants. The safest way to handle them starts with a simple strategy: make the garden less inviting, remove the slugs you find, and use controls that target slugs without creating unnecessary risks for pets, wildlife, soil, or beneficial garden creatures.
A slug problem rarely requires reaching for the strongest product on the shelf. A few practical changes can make a surprisingly big difference, especially when gardeners combine several gentle methods instead of expecting one magical trick to solve everything overnight. Slugs may be slimy little freeloaders, but they have habits, and those habits give gardeners plenty of opportunities to send them elsewhere.
