A Gardeners Forum Forums Gardening Reference Gardening in 2005 what are the hosta enemies....

I have some hostas that are getting chewed up by something. The eating away of the leaves look like catipillar marks. Can you help? Later, Merfee

Hi Merfee! Welcome to the forum Your hostas could be getting eaten by slugs, which is the 'popular' hosta bug enemy. There are lots of different things you can do that you'll find by doing a search of the forums, but a few that I can think of offhand are

-set out a shallow dish of stale beer. The slugs will flock to it and drown.
-put some crushed eggshells around your hostas. Slugs won't cross it or will cut themselves crossing it. Some people have luck with this method, but others' don't...guess it depends on whether or not your slugs are real troopers or not

To see if they're slugs munching on your hostas, go out at night with a flashlight and have a look around - that's when you'll find them

Hope that helps!

Yep, it's true.. slugs love to chow down on my hostas. I got some escar-go from gardens alive, and it seemed to help some. Not 100%, but much much better than previous years.

Meg

Beer in shallow pans has worked well for us, and there aren't any chemicals involved. Just change the beer every day or two and dump out the dead slugs.

I can just see all the slugs sitting around in a circle, holding hands, wait they don't have hands, anyways singing " I like beer! It make me a jolly good fellow!" then dying with BIG smiles on their faces. This really does work well just make sure to use a shallow pan like a pie plate or an old frisbie.