What Plants Attract Slugs?

One of the most common garden pests is slugs. These slimy pests may be small but can cause huge levels of damage across your garden. But perhaps you’re not helping matters? Maybe you’re encouraging slugs?

Surprisingly, there are a number of plants that will attract slugs to your garden including hostas, dahlias and brassicas.

So, What Plants Attract Slugs?

To ensure that you do not have slugs in your garden, you must avoid growing plants which they like. Here are a few plants that slugs are fond of: 

Hostas

Gardeners like to have hostas, especially along the borders of their gardens. Hostas do not like being in the sun for too long and prefer to be in the shade.

Therefore, hostas are often the victim of slug attacks.

Slugs also like to be in the shade and hide in the dark. If you want to grow hostas then pick those that can tolerate the sun or slugs hate. Some hostas have thick leathery leaves and are tall, so slugs find it difficult to climb and chew the leaves. 

Dahlias

Dahlias are beautiful flowers that every gardener wishes to have in their garden. Whether you are an experienced gardener or a newbie, you know how growing dahlias is not an easy task.

Unfortunately, slugs love to consume dahlias making it even more difficult to grow them!

Slugs like dahlias because of their thin, delicate leaves which they can easily consume. If you even suspect that you have slugs in your garden, it would be wise not to grow any dahlias until your garden is slug-free.

If you still wish to grow these flowers, you can protect them using traps or by surrounding them with copper tape (although this isn’t 100% effective).

Sunflowers

Sunflowers are great at adding bright colours to gardens; unfortunately, they also attract slugs.

It is easy for slugs to attack sunflower plants because of their tender leaves.

The tender leaves are not the only thing that attracts slugs. In most cases, slugs will consume the flowers as well as the seeds of your sunflower plants. As you well know, slugs are not particularly fussy about what they eat.

Vegetables 

If you like growing vegetables in your garden, you better watch out for slugs.

Slugs are known to attack vegetables, especially those which hang low or root vegetables.

Some of the vegetables which slugs love to eat are lettuce, cabbage, broccoli, and cauliflower. But, in all honesty, this list is far from exhaustive. Slugs are absolutely not fussy about what consume when it comes to the veg garden.

Fungi 

Among many other things, slugs love to consume fungi. Therefore, gardeners who grow mushrooms are disappointed to find that they get eaten by slugs. 

What Plants Do Slugs Hate?

Apart from avoiding some plants which slugs like, you can grow plants that they hate. Growing plants that slugs hate will help to repel them.

You can use this knowledge to also create a boundary using these plants and protect the more vulnerable ones against slugs.

Here are some plants which slugs hate: 

Hydrangeas

Hydrangeas are colourful flowers that gardeners love to grow. Fortunately, slugs do not like hydrangeas and do not touch them.

If your area is widely known to be easily infested with slugs, you can grow some hydrangeas. 

Lavender

Lavender is famous not only for repelling slugs but also for other pets, including cats. You can keep a lavender plant in your garden, and its strong scent will repel the slugs.

Slugs do not appreciate the strong smell or the taste of this plant. 

Rosemary 

A herb gardeners love to add to their gardens is rosemary. This plant is famous for its strong smell and flavour.

One of the reasons why slugs avoid rosemary is because of the powerful smell. In addition, slugs are not fans of the taste, and therefore, you will not find them eating rosemary. 

Slugs don’t even like the course, sharp texture of the leaves!

Geraniums 

Geraniums are plants with beautiful flowers that slugs do not like. The hairy stems are challenging to crawl on and not particularly pleasant for the slug to eat.

Summary 

Slugs may be small, but they can cause severe damage to garden plants. Therefore, it is important to make your garden an unattractive place for slugs and protect the vulnerable plants you have.

You can avoid growing plants that slugs like, or you can give them extra protection if you have them. Some of the plants which slugs like are hostas, dahlias, sunflowers, many vegetables and fungi. 

You can protect your plants by making a border with ones slugs hate like geraniums, rosemary, lavender and hydrangeas. To prevent slugs in your garden, you can also keep soil moisture low, avoid using mulch and eliminate any hiding spots.