Ick.

[ ] Very tepidly voting for Obama [ ] ?????. [ ] Any mullah-sucking billionaire-teabagging torture-loving pus-encrusted spawn of Cthulhu, bless his (R) heart.

Pick the tomatoes you can salvage and cut off and discard the ruined parts. The good tomato parts left over will be fine for sauce or maybe even chopped up for salad or salsa.

Pick off the ruined stuff and the slugs--clear everything out. Put anti-slug stuff out--even just something they can't crawl over.

I'm so sorry! I hate this stuff...all that hard work and then...

- the damage is not too bad. It's a container plant so they didn't get very far with it. I'll do some cleaning up and, weather permitting, all will be well.

Just wanted to share that moment of surprise...

Policy not party!

Man, I HATE the damn things! My garden back when I lived in the burbs was a lovely, shady, woodsy thing that hosted huge numbers of them. When I moved to the country and a big, sunny, two-acre swath of land, I thought my battles with slugs would be a thing of the past, at least in the veg garden. Hah.

Two things will stop slugs, though, diotomaceous earth and copper tape. The diotomaceous earth is easy and inconspicuous, but it does have to be renewed periodically and some slugs seem to be able to slink their way through it. Copper tape is an absolute and total barrier to slugs and lasts semi-forever. (Most hardware stores that sell gardening supplies carry rolls of it for $5 or so.)

Not sure how you'd use copper tape in containers, though you could try putting a square around the plant stem. Plain old five-and-dime hairpins pushed through the tape into the ground hold it in place just fine.