Homeowner Forum / Lawn and Garden / July 2008

Are you sure you want phosphate and not phosphide?

That looks like an awfully expensive slug killer.

Bob

I may be misunderstanding what you're up to, but kinda looks like you're
pursuing overkill, overpay, and just generally too much of a good thing.
Slugs have to eat the iron phosphate to be effected by it. It causes them
to slime their own intestines so though it's a slow nasty death for them,
they can't munch on the garden while they're dying. It's properly
non-water soluable so that one seasonal application is usually enough,
unlike other baits that work far less well and have to be re-applied
practically aftwer every watering. Slugs won't eat iron phosphate on
purpose, but will if it is imbedded in a bait that in Sluggo's case will
also stand up to rain and watering unlike bread that you seem to believe
would be a good substitute.

A product like Sluggo is 1% Iron phosphate in pellets slugs like to eat.
It would be just about impossible to apply a harmful amount of iron to the
soil with this product, but there IS a limit to how much iron phosphate is
healthy. One pound of Sluggo takes care of about 1,000 square feet of
garden. It should be used when slugs are breeding or eggs are hatching to
interrupt the generations. It is best used in spring and autumn; if timed
right the effect will so utterly decimate the slug population that the
bait won't be needed again for two years.

If you plan to somehow get it to dissolve, then it will wash deeper into
the soil with the first watering or rain, having no effect. If you're
mixing it with bread, unlike the granular product which holds up to wet,
the bread will just dissolve into the soil or be eaten by other garden
critters mainly insects (which won't hurt them but won't be getting slugs
either).

So it sounds to me like you've tried to make your bait which will have an
inferior effect over a proven product. It sounds like what you're making
is at best an organic fertilizer that that won't be solid long enough for
any snails to chomp on it, thus requiring so many extra applications one
actually risks plant food overdose with still only a mediocre effect on
slugs and snails.

Iron phosphates are safe human food supplements so products like Sluggo
can even be used around plants to be eaten without risk. But that's in
very tiny amounts. And while at 1% doses iron phosphate is non-toxic in
the garden except to molluscs, if it accumulates from misuse it can be
dangerous to mammals.

There are more deaths of children under six from products containing
ferric and ferous phosphates than from any other potential poison in
family households, and could harm pets if your home mix of slug bait has
maybe zero percent in one helping and fifty percent in another helping
from not having mixed evenly, as it won't. Side-effects from ingestion or
inhalation are intoxication, fever, abdominal distention, dehydration,
spikes in blood pressure, and heart failure. I wouldn't personally play
with the pure chemical when sensible safe products that work so well do
exist.

-paghat the ratgirl

In article
<b2forewagner-1B720D.14265022072008@sn-indi.vsrv-sjc.supernews.net>, Bill
<b2forewagner@snip.net> wrote:

Sounds more like a chemical reaction than dissolving in solution.