A Rake and a Hoe and Beer
Ah, gardening. You plow up a section of your yard, remove twenty-seven wheelbarrow loads of rocks, buy a truckload of topsoil, and spend the next six weeks on your knees in the dirt pulling up weeds. But it's all worth it, because in the end you have a big patch of brown dirt where there used to be grass, and one head of lettuce.
Make sure you do not harvest the lettuce, as it has a higher insect density than the board of a major oil company. Mostly these pests are slugs (in both cases), which may not technically be classified as insects, but really should be. The dictionary says they are gastropod mollusks, the same family as snails and certain seafood, which probably means you can eat them. If you like eating really gross, slimy things like tofu, you will most likely enjoy slugs. You don't have to admit to it either. Just say you like "escargot sans coquille." Yum.
If instead you decide your garden is to be kept solely as a place where you will work on developing lower-back pain and arthritis in the process of raising vegetables, stop being silly. You will never be able to grow any vegetables aside from zucchini, which is a type of inedible squash (although this is a bit redundant). But since you insist on trying, You'll have to get rid of your slugs.
One way to destroy slugs is to put salt on them. Unfortunately, this method requires you to stand sentry in your garden twenty-four hours a day with a saltshaker. This allows some people to combine their favorite hobbies: camping and gardening. Normal people look for an easier solution.
Luckily there is another way to do away with slugs. If you put out a bowl of beer (or other alcoholic beverage), the slugs will drown themselves in it. No, not like your college roommate. I mean literally. Oh, you did too, huh?
The problem with the beer method is that woodland creatures are all hapless lushes. Putting out bowls of beer will soon make you responsible for supplying booze to a whole host of drunken squirrels, rabbits, skunks, deer, and slugs. Yes, once the word is out that you are providing free beer, critters will begin trekking to your yard to party. Things will be pretty quiet until the college students begin to arrive. Then it is time to break out the shotgun.
To avoid all of this hassle, the best thing to do is to let your garden patch grow over with weeds. Weeds are plants that are strong and vibrant and clever enough to taste terrible so no one will want to eat them. This includes your slugs, who will be forced to find food elsewhere. To insure their departure, you might try to convince your neighbors to take up gardening.
If you still insist on growing vegetables, you have one more option. Cash in you IRA and any other investments you may have, and take the money down to your local hardware store. Buy all of the insecticide, herbicide, fungicide, pesticide, and whatever else you can find that ends in "ide." Most hardware stores will offer you a special trade-in deal on your car in case you run out of money.
Take all of these hazardous chemicals home and spray them all over your garden area. I find that it is cheaper just to invite the DOE to use your yard as a disposal site for high-level nuclear waste, which has the same effect. Not only will nothing come anywhere near your yard, but you will be able to buy up all of your neighbors' lots dirt cheap to expand your little "garden." You may even get government subsidies for this.
Also, vegetables seem to thrive in this sort of environment. And remember, radioactive tomatoes have a shelf-life of over nine thousand years! Isn't it wonderful how technology can improve even the simplest task?