Slugs!

It's that time of year when the slugs emerge from winter quarters hungry and raring to go. Earth Ways has a timely article on Dealing With Slugs in a Permaculture Garden including a description of the different slugs and which ones are the veggie munchers. I especially like the diagram showing the anatomy of a slug. 

Our garden is now totally out of balance after the removal of bordering trees and fence replacement plus the associated digging. I'm going for a nematode solution supplemented by the bottle beer trap recommended in the article while the imbalance is corrected. We used nematodes several years ago and they did seem to reduce the number of slugs sufficiently to minimise crop damage. I've also tried open beer traps but decided that was not a good idea as the sozzled slugs were quickly gobbled up by other wildlife. Whether or not alcohol is present in the slugs in a sufficient concentration to affect anything that eats them, I don't know, but probably best to err on the side of caution.