Slugs, for serious

slugs are a nuisance and last year I managed not to have any major damage from them. I lucked out last year and they really didn't attack anything in my yard until pretty late in the summer. Even then, the slugs really only went after some of the tomatoes. This spring they have shown up in the planter box from last year pretty frequently. The puzzling thing is that other than starting off by eating down one of the lettuces, they've really ignored their usual food sources. For some reason I still don't understand, they are eating my baby squash plants.

my poor suffering Butternut

 Squash leaves are rough and bristly exactly the kind of leaf slugs don't like. The extra confounding part, there is a lettuce 6" away from the butternut squash. The slugs have barely touched it.

The lettuce is right there, why do they keep eating the squash? Why?!

 I've decided on a multifaceted attack on the slugs.
Beer- I have a collection of beers that I don't like very much. Beer is the age old go to for slug killing, put some in a shallow dish, bury a can of beer, or just leave a half filled bottle tucked next to the plants. The slugs crawl in, get drunk, and drown. This way they die happy and I have a use for all the beer that I don't really like.
Diatomaceous earth- This is fossilized plankton for lack of a better description. It is a very fine powder that can be sprinkled around plants. The fossils have a high silica content which makes them very sharp on a microscopic level. It is very uncomfortable for slugs to go across and had the advantage of discouraging other pests too. It does need to be reapplied every few weeks be careful about  breathing it in. Here is a full article on it's uses in the garden http://www.gardeningknowhow.com/plant-problems/pests/pesticides/diatomaceous-earth-insect-control.htm
Picking them off- If I get outside early enough in the morning, I have been pulling the little buggers off my plants and depositing them in the beer. I do throw some out in the street in the hopes they are run over or they go away. I'm sure they just head back toward those sweet sweet squash plants they seem to like so much.

I'm hoping that in a couple of weeks the squash plants will be big enough and bristly enough the slugs will no longer be interested in them. Of course by then the beans will be out of the ground so the slugs might turn their attention that way. This should be interesting.