Calling all gardeners-UV light question

richpalm

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Jun 21, 2003
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Might get a UV light; any resident gardeners know if garden slugs and night crawlers flouresce?
I know scorpions do. (wife is a gardener and HATES slugs.) Thought I'd make her search and destroy missions easier and I get to buy another light!

Thanks,

Rich
 

AilSnail

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Two tips I have been told to work: Make sand belts around the plants you want to protect.
Or get siberian ducks. They love snails.
 

Double_A

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I've got a couple UV lights, longwave and shortwave. Neither have shown any glowing bugs in my garden (plenty of slug and snails) I have seen some glowing from soil usually in dark damp conditions under some rocks etc.


GregR
 

The_LED_Museum

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Some UV LEDs (those emitting at 390-395nm) can make fungus on the soil fluoresce a reddish color, but I don't have slugs and snails here (I'm in an apartment with no balcony and no windowsills) so that I can't answer.

(Edit) Leave the nightcrawlers (earthworms) alone because they're good for your plants. Just squash the slugs and snails.
 

xrayzebra

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Slugs - Pour a cold (canned) beer into a glass, and cut the beer can in half. Put the can into the ground so that it forms a little well, into which you pour a little bit of the beer. Slugs love beer, and they will crawl into the can and drown. Happily. Repeat this until you have pleny of slug beer traps, but don't drive afterward.

Also, if you have access to some copper sheet metal, surround the area from which you wish to exclude slugs with a copper edging. Slugs will not cross it. Once you initially rid the area of slugs, they will not return. (Install the copper just like the common plastic edging you might use to separate grassy areas from gardens.)

Also, if you happen to have pet turtles, they love slugs. If you are manually plucking slugs off your plants, give them to the turtles. I have one turtle who is too shy to eat in front of us. He eats well if we walk away and give him some privacy, but slugs are the *one thing* he will eat in our presence. Turtles are not hoggish, but both our turtles will eat slugs until they are so full they can no longer pull their heads or legs into their shells, and they have to sleep with their heads and legs just dangling limply.
 

richpalm

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Central Pa.
[ QUOTE ]
The LED Museum said:[/b

(Edit) Leave the nightcrawlers (earthworms) alone because they're good for your plants. Just squash the slugs and snails.

[/ QUOTE ]

Definitely! Got worms galore in the compost. But, you see, her sadistic side comes out with slugs-she *hates* them-so she hand picks them and sends them to their deaths in a salt water container. Just thought a UV light might make the hunt easier.

Of course, the same side would come out if she found out how much the M4 was...

BTW Craig, I really enjoy your site. really nice job!

Rich
 

JackBlades

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Yorba Linda, California, U.S.A.
I have a question along these lines......why does incan light illuminate spiderwebs but LED doesn't?
I go out in my yard in the evening to watch the garden spiders construct the new web for the night. My UltraStinger lights them up nicely, but the ARC LSH makes them invisible. The LS easily lights up a tree 50 feet away, but not a spiderweb 10 feet away??
 

hideo

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May 2, 2003
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second the beer traps and copper (OOOOOHHHHHHHHHH, EEEETTT BUUUURRRRNNNSSS!!!)

hideo
 

hank

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Berkeley CA
>spiderwebs
Great question, I hope someone invites an entomologist to think about it. I'd guess the whatever-it-is that makes up spider silk reflects the visible spectrum and transmits the UV. And I'd guess that mostly because some insects do see in the UV range (the photos of flowers in UV show fancy stripes called "honey guides" that people can't see on the petals, that can be seen by the hundreds of kinds of pollinating bees to help them find the honey - for the plant's convenience, of course).

And -- I wonder, anyone know if moonlight has any measurable UV in it? because many moths are also pollinators; don't know if they'd see a web at night any differently or not.

Say, anyone got a bright high schooler who's ready for a really interesting science project involving supplemental ultraviolet illumination of spiderwebs and counting how many moths ....??

maybe pay more attention to it
 

LED-FX

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Edinburgh UK
[ QUOTE ]
I just don't know what to say about all that

[/ QUOTE ]

Should have commented that the link has nothing to do with me apart from some sympathy thats not with the slug.

Having tried to be organic with only result being well fed pests, now use the chemical warfare route in garden.
Adam
 
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