I Heard This Aluminum Foil Hack Deters Pests — Here’s What Happened When I Tried It

As an avid home gardener, fighting bugs and other plant maladies like weeds can feel like a full-time job. That’s because a lot of the time my Pennsylvania yard gets overtaken by a variety of insects (especially slugs) that seem intent on eating my new seedlings and plants as soon as I put them in the ground.

That’s one of the reasons why I was super excited to learn about a hack that promises to keep common garden pests away without any harsh chemicals. The one thing you’d need? Aluminum foil.

I read on How Stuff Works that sprinkling shredded pieces of aluminum foil around your plants will keep pests at bay because the reflecting light will confuse them. (Much like this disco ball trick to deter flying bugs.) 

Considering I already had some aluminum foil in my kitchen, I figured I had nothing to lose by trying this trick out. So, I decided to test this on two plants I was having trouble with.

My family had taken me to the garden center to buy plants for Mother’s Day, so I had a bunch of new flowers that I recently added to the garden. Unfortunately, two trumpet plants we had purchased weren’t doing too well, since something had been eating the leaves. I  tore up a chunk of aluminum foil into small strips and placed it around the base of one of the plants. I could tell almost immediately that the aluminum foil was probably too thin to stay where I wanted it to, so I switched things up with the second plant, and made the strips thicker and then crumpled them up as I placed them around the plant in the hopes that the foil would stay where I put it. 

I was excited to see if this hack would protect my new plants and checked the progress the very next day, which is when I discovered that all the aluminum foil had blown away. We hadn’t had storms over night, so I thought maybe our dog had gotten into the garden and stirred it up, so I put another layer of foil out. However, the following day I came out and the foil was once again gone, but this time I found pieces of it strewn across my lawn. Before I could start collecting the small bits, a slight breeze blew through and sent the foil flying further away. Disappointed, I checked on my plants, only to discover that the neighborhood bugs were still making quite a meal out of them.

The idea sounded like a promising one, since the website said that it would not only keep pests away, but also reflect valuable light back onto the plants; however, it ended up being a complete bust. The foil is just too lightweight (yes, even when crumpled up) to stay in place. I had considered balling up bigger chunks of foil and burying the bottoms of them down in the mulch to keep them in place, but I think that would’ve defeated the purpose since crinkling the foil reduces its reflective ability, which seems to be a key part of this hack.

While I am disappointed that this didn’t work (and slightly annoyed that I’ll be picking foil strips out of my grass for the foreseeable future), I am glad I gave it a try. Had it worked it would’ve been a super easy and inexpensive way to protect my plants. Since I’m almost certain that slugs are to blame, I’m probably just going to revert to my favorite garden hack, and put a few bottle caps filled with beer around my plants to see if that keeps them safe instead.