In my location a 50 lb bag of Sluggoā¢ is about the same price per lb as table salt, plus it is rated organic and is beneficial to plants.
Sluggo is sh*t in the rain. Otherwise it works great. Put it on wet ground after a week of seattle rain and it looks like the stuff in my compost tumbler. More importantly the slugs slide right past it.
The beauty of ammonia is I can put it in my pump sprayer and mist all the beds in the drizzle. They still dance like bacon on a frying pan.
Thatās quite cheap!
At those prices you might be tempted to āover useā
Be carful with over use. I remember reading scientific literature that even the ābiologicalā slug killing pellets harm earth worms.
I still use them. But a little goes a long way. The slugs search out the pellets, you donāt need a continuous line as a barrier. A few pellets here and there does the trick.
From what i heard, the āactive ingredientā iron phosphate. Is quite harmless. But to make it effective they add āotherā stuff. And that combination can actually be toxic to more than just slugs. There seems to be a ālegal loopholeā where they donāt have to mention the āother stuffā because it does nothing on itās own. It is only harmful in combination.
That wasnāt from a scientific source though. So Iām not sure how reliable it is.
TLDR. i use those slug pellets myself. But only just enough, donāt pour them everywhere. Since they probably hurt your earthworms and other organisms a bit.
Sorry @Richard, I could have said that a little more kindly. Stream of consciousness is my weaknessā¦
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The base is grain meal. The āother stuffā only occurs in Sluggo+ā¢ which requires a pesticide applicator license to purchase and is not offered in retail stores. Further, the other stuff is not related to slugs and snails.
@Noddykitty
I have lived among the coastal redwoods and understand the monster slugs and rainfall you are dealing with.
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From MSDSā¦ Super informative 
Sluggo:
Sluggo+
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In my region Sluggo+ is popular with farmers of annual row crops who battle both snails and ground-level insect eggs + larvae (e.g. growers of leafy vegetables, tomatoes).
Was referred this thread by @disc4tw.
I was looking at Sluggo and found this newer analysis that seems to indicate it isnāt as safe as previously thought 
I guess Iām just going to go back to the DE (with a mask) approach and try the coffee approach as well. I tried the beer trap approach and it didnāt work well for me - though maybe I need to try it again ā¦ or even better, HAVE a beer and try it. Iām sure with enough beer in me, itās going to work
From what I can tell, this is the paper that is referenced most often by articles claiming Sluggo is toxic to earthworms. Itās paywalled so hereās a quote from it:
There was virtually no earthworm mortality over the 14 days of the experiment, but there were considerable differences in earthworm weights, although none of them differed significantly (P ā¤ 0.05), from the control earthworm mean weights. The earthworms that were exposed to SluggoĀ® (recommended application rate) gained significantly less weight (P ā¤ 0.05) than those exposed to iron phosphate only, as did those exposed to five times the recommended application rate of SluggoĀ®.
Hardly a convincing argument for the risk Sluggo poses to earthworms, since even 5x the recommended rate did not cause earthworm mortality nor did it reduce weight gain at any significant amount compared to the control. In fact, none of the treatments were statistically significantly different compared to the control.
Also, iron itself is toxic. The case studies where dogs were poisoned by Sluggo involved large amounts being consumed. Iām sure if we were to eat handfuls of Sluggo we would get iron poisoning as well. Or iron supplements. Or multivitamins with iron. The dose makes the poison.
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As @hoosierbanana mentioned an electric barrier works. Iāve used a nine volt battery with two lengths of 16 gauge bare wire spaced 3/4 inch apart. I stapled the wire to a board. One wire attached to + and other attached to -. It worked well for me protecting a raised bed.
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This makes a lot of sense. There is so much science and pseudo science that itās hard to know whatās right. Appreciate you digging into this.
Iāll get some sluggo and try it out.
Iām trying to go very āno spray, no pesticidesā etc in my yard and thatās why Iām so cautious. I know this approach probably cannot scale for larger yards and definitely not for actual farms.
Unfortunately they are all over the yard so I donāt think this will work well for me at this point.
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@SoCalBackyard, Have you tried misting ammonia from a spray bottle? Very, very effective at killing slugs.
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Seems like beer has been mentioned previouslyā¦ Been years since weāve done so but it was very effective. Dug out a bit of mulch so that an aluminum pie pan would sit down in and have the lip at ground level. Pour in a beerā¦ Next morning tons of dead slugs floating in it.
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What did I just watch? I donāt quite know what to make of that! 
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Havenāt. My issue is that they are so wide spread at times that I would have to spray all the mulch and the whole yard. So IDK if it will be a scalable solution. But will add it to my list of tools to try against the slug invaders ā¦ I love your descriptions btw. Exactly how I feel about them.
I feel like I tried this some years ago at a previous house but didnāt get any results. Will try again since it seems like everyone is saying it will work and it costs little and it totally chemical free.
Effectiveness of home remedies for snails & slugs varies by region. They largely fail in Pacific coast states.
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