Slugs will ruin a vegetable garden pretty fast unless some serious means of taking care of them is implemented. The electric fence has proven to be pretty well 100% effective in my experiments to date. The fence consists of two runs of wires spaced about 3/4 inch apart running around the perimeter of the raised bed - one wire is connected to the +ve terminal and the other to the -ve terminal of a battery. An electric current will flow through the slug if it makes contact with both wires at the same time. The resulting "shock" with usually cause the slug to turn back.
I've been using a 9-volt battery as the power source, the battery lasts the whole growing season but the voltage drops to 5 volts or so by the end of the season (my measurements). It's a good idea to check the volage once in a while to make sure the battery is still providing enough voltage (corrosion can be a problem at the battery connectors). A few years ago when setting up a new fence I didn't have a 9-volt battery connector so I used a multi-battery AA holder that I had on hand. The combined series connection of batteries gave 12 volts. This turned out to be a bad idea as the 12 volts would more often than not kill the slugs rather than just turn them away.
The nice thing about the slug fence is that it is on duty 24-7, many other slug control methods require some kind of regular checking or resupplying. Also, no dangerous chemicals to worry about with this setup.
My first electric fence was mounted on a low "raised" bed garden. It was effective until the vegetation in the garden grew high enough to bend over and touch the ground - this gave the slugs the bridge they needed to reach the main feast.
The video below demonstrates how a slug typically reacts when attempting to cross the fence. It is interesting to notice from the video that once the slug was "shocked" a number of times (by making contact with both wires) it was then conditioned to react the same way when touching just one wire (no current flow possible through the slug).
I've been using a 9-volt battery as the power source, the battery lasts the whole growing season but the voltage drops to 5 volts or so by the end of the season (my measurements). It's a good idea to check the volage once in a while to make sure the battery is still providing enough voltage (corrosion can be a problem at the battery connectors). A few years ago when setting up a new fence I didn't have a 9-volt battery connector so I used a multi-battery AA holder that I had on hand. The combined series connection of batteries gave 12 volts. This turned out to be a bad idea as the 12 volts would more often than not kill the slugs rather than just turn them away.
The nice thing about the slug fence is that it is on duty 24-7, many other slug control methods require some kind of regular checking or resupplying. Also, no dangerous chemicals to worry about with this setup.
My first electric fence was mounted on a low "raised" bed garden. It was effective until the vegetation in the garden grew high enough to bend over and touch the ground - this gave the slugs the bridge they needed to reach the main feast.
The video below demonstrates how a slug typically reacts when attempting to cross the fence. It is interesting to notice from the video that once the slug was "shocked" a number of times (by making contact with both wires) it was then conditioned to react the same way when touching just one wire (no current flow possible through the slug).
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There are some metal stairs outside the door on which the cat must be standing while "marking" the door.
I will try to connect one pole of the 9V battery to the metal grid and make kinda spiral of wire that sticks to the door and connect it to the other pole.
I´m curious ;) Evil cat!
This will solve the problem
Instead of using batteries,connect the fence wire to a soar light.This gives U 24/7 cover at no expence ,and will not kill worms
More than Pavlov's effect.
If the wire and staples are of the same metal, corrosion from this cause will be eliminated.
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Painting the backing strip and using insulated staples would prevent battery drain caused by the conductivity of damp wood.
Even oil or wood preservative would help.
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The system could easily be run from mains with an ordinary transformer or plug-in power supply unit.
(For safety, you must have the transformer indoors, just the low voltage wires running into the garden.)
As has been mentioned, the effects of AC and DC on slugs might be different. And the use of AC might reduce corrosion of the wires.
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If you were using a higher voltage, it would be easy to limit the current (to avoid killing them) by putting a resistor in series, that is, from one battery terminal to one end of one wire.
(I think that must be what is done with ordinary electric fences, to give a more uncomfortable shock without electrocuting people.)
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One possible problem from having the wires so far apart: little tiny baby slugs might get across unshocked. To avoid this, you could have several wires at different distances apart, of alternating polarity. (i.e. +wire, 1/4" gap, -wire, 1/2" gap, +wire, 3/4" gap, etc.)
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On your last page, you say, "you can twist the ends of the wire together". To avoid short-circuiting people who don't understand electricity, you could say, "twist the ends of each wire together, but keep the upper and lower wires separate".
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It's rather a shame your system is probably not quite complicated enough to be patentable ! You would make a fortune !
A the very end of this season, and after I had harvested most of the crop, I did find a very small slug in the garden. It was either too short while moving across the wires to make simultaneous contact, or else it was after the battery voltage dropped down to 0.5 volts or so (see an earlier comment).
Lots of good info in your comments - thanks!
as an electrician i suggest you change the powersupply from a single 9V to a 2x6V-Setup.
Why? The 9V-Blocks have quite a low capacity. It is rains, the wood gets wet and thus draining a small but constant current from your battery.
If you wire 2 6Volt-Batteries in serial, you have 12V AND those 6V-Blocks hold a MUCH larger capacity.
I talk from those lantern-Batteries: http://www-mp3.us/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/6v_battery-300x300.jpg
Cheap and available almost everywhere.
Connect it like:
Fence-Wire 1 to + of battery one
- of battery one to + of battery two
Fence-Wire 2 to - of battery two
Maybe 6V are also enough for the slugs. I think so, because the slugs are quite conductive and sensitive for current... So maybe also only one 6V battery is needed.
As capacity goes:
a 9V-Block normally has around 500-700mAh and costs around 1.40$ (thats around 2$ per 1000 mAh)
a 6V-Battery has around 11000 mAh and costs around 6-7$ (thats around 0.64$ per 1000 mAh)
--> So the 6V-solution is around 32% (for single-cell) or 64% the price of the 9V-Solution if you calculate the runtine of the setup (Replacement-batteries).
Please dont misunderstand me: Your solution works very well and is a straight forward-solution.
I just tryed to optimise it cost-whise with repect to runtime. :)
I wonder if it can be modified to control ants. Perhaps, you could put an aluminium foil sheet, which the ants would have to cross. Then the circuit will be activated by, um, a camera connected to a laptop that can recognize ants in the picture.
The other idea is to activate the circuit with a movenment detecting light, but maybe ants are so small.
But what am I saying... You could keep the aluminium foil connected permanently. My electrical knowledge is much less than I will love it to be, but I guess you will have to use a transformer to drop the voltage from a permanent source (like..., the main of the house??)
And the greatest idea of all is...., electrocuting those nasty geckos that dare walk on my wall, AND they start singing when I turn the light off to sleep.
-.
Also, I got my kids to play game one summer evening, loaded their water gun with salt water, go out to the lawn to hunt them slugs just after sun set, I gave them a dime for each slug collected, boy did we had fun that night, unfortunately, they empty out all the slugs (including neighbor's yard) we have not seen them for 5 years now. They kept asking to play same game every summer but we don't have slug since... :-(
As for the electric fence, a simple lamp timer to set on and off time solve "most" of the problems (I use this for fencing deer too so it comes on and off at different times). BUT, that is not to say it worked 100%, often time I go out to the garden at dinner time to get some fresh green onion, ZAP!!! they got me too! LOL these shocks are no where near say... getting shocked from an old TV high voltage line (just behind the picture tube) they are very low current and just feel a bid uncomfortable.. .
Hope it performs well.
My thoughts about slugs for those who care to read on (if not, no worry : you won't miss much !)
1) Why slugs should be considered as we do :
A slug is a useless disgusting animal :
- As it does not talk it hardly can be considered as a replacement for a Norvegian blue parrot (English POV, eg. Monty Python).
- As it cannot be sauté it cannot replace a good snail cooked with garlic and butter (uptight French "art of the table").
- As it does not fly it cannot pass for a yummy grilled locust (African cuisine).
- As they eat our garden lettuce it deprives us from a healthy source of vitamins (American cooking).
Therefore there is no reason why humans shouldn't dispose of the little scavenger.
2) My solution :
Slugs slip under my front door and enter the house â¦
My solution is pretty straightforward : spread a small layer of salt on the porch. It stop those little slimy things sneaking in.
Salt from the kitchen does the job pretty well.
When I saw one on my terrace I simply dropped a small portion of a spoonful of the stuff direct on the beast : as I watched it curl and retract I understood how effective it is (however as you respect slugs as a living creature the latter test should be performed only once : after all, I am not edible myself - or so I think - and I wouldn't like to have someone cover me with quicklime !â¦).
3) My wishes :
May all Instructable readers and contributors out there enjoy the coming week ! (with a special thought to my friends Stephanie and Mark who are still fighting against the devastation of their house in Jersey City and helping their friends and neighborsâ¦)
May I suggest putting this under a ledge on a plastic backing to water proof it ? My thinking, If the wood gets wet it will short it out and thus be ineffective until it dries.
Some weather stripping or something of the like from the hardware store should do the trick. Setting the wires closer together if possible should also increase its effectiveness.