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Grapefruit to Get Rid of Garden Slugs

Grapefruit to Get Rid of Garden Slugs

Updated 2 January 2020 02:32 PM

A few of these simple grapefruit traps scattered throughout your vegetable garden or perennial beds will go a long way toward taking care of your garden slug problem



  1. Simply cut a grapefruit in half and scoop out the flesh, leaving the empty rind. (You can eat the grapefruit of course.)
  2. Place the rind, upside-down (skin up, pith down), in your garden wherever you've noticed slug damage.
  3.  Let the grapefruit rind sit overnight
  4. The following morning, lift the grapefruit rind up. Slugs will have congregated on the underside of the rind. 
  5.  Dispose of them as you see fit (ie could feed them to your chickens, turtles, etc or toss them into a bucket of soapy water then dispose of them.)
  6. Replace the grapefruit rind and repeat until you stop catching slugs or you stop seeing damage. Compost the rind.
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Science Notes

Garden slugs are attracted to dark, moist areas where they can hide. They'll find the grapefruit rinds when they're out at night looking for snacks and crawl inside, resting there during the sunny daylight hours.  

Related Tip

You can use a variety of fruit rinds to catch garden slugs, including orange rinds, lemon rinds and lime rinds, halved cantaloupe or honeydew melons from which you have scooped out the fruit, or winter squash rinds again halved and hollowed out. See also Molasses Garden Pest Control Spray.

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