Controlling Slugs with Copper Tape

My husband, Bill, is a genius! He’s come up with a great method for controlling slugs. I place rings of copper tape around the base of my cabbage family seedlings to keep the slugs away.

Here’s the amazing thing. The skin and antennae of slugs reacts electrically with copper. That means you can use it as a deterrent.

I’ve been purchasing a roll of Corry’s copper tape from our local garden center. Instead of separating the copper tape from its paper backing, I keep the two together. Then I form a ring and staple the ends together.

I’ve heard that folks can adhere the copper tape to the rim of plant containers or raised beds. But it’s kind of expensive. Hence, my simple solution to create (relatively) stiff rings and place them around the plants. Unfortunately, those rings don’t hold up well to moisture and humidity so they don’t last for more than a season. Sometimes, even less time than that. But they do work well so that’s why I’ve been putting up with this.

Well, Bill had an “aha!” moment and decided to do some experimentation. You can see the result in the photo above.

First, he grabbed some 3″ diameter plastic drain pipe from an old project. He cut it into rings that are about 1 1/3″ tall. Then he separated the copper tape from the paper backing and attached the tape to each plastic ring. So the rings are super sturdy and impervious to moisture. In addition, they’re a large enough diameter to easily slip over each seedling once they’ve been planted. Brilliant!

So now we’re going to replace the paper rings with the new-and-improved plastic rings. We’ll see how they hold up in the garden. I tell ya, he’s a handy guy to have around!

Here’s a link to the copper tape we use. You can usually find it in your local garden center.