Is strawberry worth growing in Georgia?

I hear slugs love strawberries. My neighborhood has a slug infestation. This past year, in an effort to save my swiss chard, I went out for three evenings in a row with a flash light and a scissor, and went slug hunting. I killed about 200 slugs, and didn’t even make a dent. They multiplied faster than I could kill. Is this the wrong climate for strawberries? I don’t see how they can be stopped. And half eaten strawberries are disgusting.

If you build a raised bed an run copper tape around the rim they won’t cross it.

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We always put down planks of wood in the summer. If its hot, they’ll go under there. In the evening, but before it cools down, you turn over the planks and collect the slugs. This works best if they have no other places to hide, like long grass, bushes…
We don’t cut them, we drown them in a big bucket.
Of course it sounds like you have horrible hordes of snails (luckily we can’t compete in this regard) but if the problem is that you simply don’t find them all, give them places to hide and look for them there.

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Oh boy - I just spent 70$ on strawberry plants for my middle Tennessee backyard. I hope they make it.
I have some slugs but haven’t seen in large quantities…

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Our yard is crawling with slugs, and they decimate some vegetables if not copper-protected (beans and potatoes especially), but I’ve never seen them go after the strawberry plants, other than maybe some of the fruit if I don’t pick early enough. I’m not sure what the variety of strawberry is, though, that patch was there when we bought the house.

Of course, I’m not sure whether the many species of slugs and snails we have in Seattle are different from the slugs elsewhere, they may have different preferred diets.

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I have business associates that have a large fruit farm in Georgia and they grow strawberries. Its possible.

Try beer traps. Not that we have a huge populations, but my mother always used beer traps to kill slugs.

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Don’t know about Georgia, but they are a Farmers’ Market staple in Louisiana, so it must be possible.

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You don’t have a slug problem, you have a duck deficiency.

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Diatomaceous Earth works really well when sprinkled around the plants too. It works great for my lettuce.

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Strawberries are always worth growing. Mmmmmm…

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Here slugs love just about everything, even full size fig leaves and loquat leaves, many insects don’t like the leaves of those once they have lost their tenderness. Sounds like you have even more than we do, I am guessing that repelling them is your best option since there are so many.

Besides what others have suggested, slugs hate Kelp powder, and they hate iron phosphate.

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I have had ducks for about 5 yrs. Slugs are now an endangered species around here.
For the places my ducks can’t get to, I use sluggo. non-toxic. Iron phosphate, I believe. I like the way my ducks turn slugs, etc. into eggs!
I didn’t know slugs hate kelp powder… good to know!

Before I got ducks I would go out early in the morning… coffee in one hand… scissors in the other. …but they were still winning. Got ducks!

Yes Ribs!.. slug problem = duck deficiency!!:rofl:

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I am pretty sure it is rainy down there in Georgia so a better climate for them than where I live. Just apply sluggo or something else to kill the slugs. Here in Colorado we really struggle with strawberries because of the low rain and heat. I tried to grow Mara des bois here and started out with 25. By the end of the summer I had 12 or 13 plants. Our summers are 90+ degree days and little moisture so I know we cannot grow them. I literally watered them every day and they just died. Strawberry are surprisingly picky and needy.

Iron phosphate also worked great for me, here in west central Georgia. It kept the slugs out of the strawberries… so the birds could enjoy them :laughing: I had a mockingbird in particular that spent hours watching over the strawberry patch. It would fuss at me every time I went out to pick them. Between the slugs, the birds, and the rot, I got very few actual strawberries. The plants always looked great, though.

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What varieties did you grow?

I don’t remember as this was about a decade ago. Something I got at one of the big box stores after doing a bit of research.

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