So tell me if I'm just over thinking

Gargoyle91

Gargoyle91

I have 17 raised beds and I do not believe in pesticides all organic- I have been having a Problem with Earwigs and Slugs.
 
I just bought a bunch of Solar Walkway lights to place 1 in each bed along with a beer and Molasses/Oil trap at the base of each light, I Also hear that Lizards would stalk the lights knowing that prey would be there, Frogs even but my pond isn't complete.
 
Am I nuts or do you think this may help?   
 
I once modified a backyard of a semi-rural home with a broad shallow pond including a water lily, bordered by ornamental bog plants and flanked by shrubs -- all to encourage garter snakes to stay in the area. The species we have in our area is a voracious consumer of our garden slugs, which are a serious destroyer of gardens. Seriously, slugs here on the West Coast are huge... and numerous. After seeing what they can do, overnight, to a row of lettuce, the word "stampede" doesn't seem silly at all.
The customer who hired me for all this landscaping (it was my landscape plan) also used wooden decking for most of his foot-traffic areas, which minimizes contact between snakes and people. Wood is a poor heat-sink, so snakes don't linger after sunset on the decks, they hide under them. Also, decking constantly reverberates whenever people are walking on it. Snakes feel those vibrations, and flee under such decks at the first footfall.

Within a few weeks, the slugs stopped scything down flowers, his wife hardly caught a glimpse of a snake, and the water lily blooms were in easy line-of-sight of the back porch. It was a fancier and pricier bit of landscaping than most folk would indulge in, but the customer was quite satisfied.

You aren't over-thinking things. I like your ideas.
 
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