Booby-trapping hosta chewers
Q: Please help me with figuring out what is chewing on my hosta. It has big holes in the leaves, some of which are mostly eaten. Last year it was bug free and beautiful.
A: I’m surprised you went a year without being discovered by the local riffraff: snails or slugs (a slug is just a snail without a shell). They can chew numerous ragged holes in the leaves of hosta, impatiens, and other perennial and annual landscape plants. They both travel on a trail of mucous. A silvery slime trail near a damaged plant is good evidence that a slug or snail is the culprit. You can make a spot attractive to slugs and then hand-pick and destroy them each day. A board supported off the ground by small rocks will attract them. So will an empty half-cantaloupe rind. The collected slugs or snails can be drowned in soapy water.
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