When it rains often enough for slugs to find their way to the cactus plants, then it is as bad as it can ever get for growing cactus plants in Wisconsin. Most of the state of Wisconsin is in a drought, but Dane County is having plenty of rain. It seems like it has rained every day for the last week and before this the soil hasn't had a chance to completely dry for the last month.

I've been worrying about this for the past few days and today I found half a dozen slugs feeding on some of my Gymnocalycium plants. For some reason slugs are attracted to the old flower parts that remain on developing seed pods. Most of the slugs I found were attached to seed pods, and a few feeding directly on stems. It wasn't even suppose to rain today and it has been overcast and wet all day. Hopefully tomorrow will be a turning point and if everything has a chance to dry for a few days the slugs will go away.

I decided to try some garlic oil on the slugs and most of my Gymnos, and it seems to be helping. The slugs began crawling off of the plants shortly after being sprayed with this garlic oil spray (a horticulture supply that can be purchased in a spray bottle at most greenhouses), and I pulled them off the plants with tweezers. I only flung the slugs a short distance away from the plants, because I want to see if they come back later.

Slugs are very hard to kill and I don't even try, but if it continues to rain I may need to take more drastic measures. I think I'll try putting out a pan of beer and see if that will attract them to crawl into the beer and drown. If it stops raining tomorrow perhaps the garlic oil will be enough to keep them away until the flower pots dry out.