Fight Snails

2023 Author: Hannah Pearcy | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-08-25 03:36

Of course, biological snail killers also lead to their death, but by deliberately avoiding pesticides, the vegetables in the bed remain unoccupied and even small children and pets are not at risk. However, biological snail control is also a lot of effort - perseverance and perseverance are required if you want to fight snails with home remedies.

Garden care

tips for snail control

Anyone who has snails in their garden every year is suffering - and usually has many supposed miracle cures for the …

Fight snails

You will never be able to banish snails completely from the garden, especially the Spanish slug covers considerable distances in search of food. But you can take many simple measures to prevent a snail infestation in the vegetable garden:

Snails hibernate in the ground, lay their eggs in cavities and hide there from the sun: If you want to drive snails out of the bed, the first prerequisite is that you limit their shelter possibilities! Dig up the garden soil late (after the frost, just before you order the beds) so that snails do not have any space to spend the winter. Practical tip: In spring, loosen the beds regularly with the digging fork. This will destroy the cavities that the snails could use to lay eggs. This will prevent snail infestation.

Collect snails

Boards, shingles and stone slabs left lying there provide snail shelter - eliminate these snail hostels in the garden. Picking up snails should become a daily routine: If you roam the vegetable patch again in the evening, collect all the snails - a self-made snail gripper will help you. Check out stepping stones and container plants! The question that then arises is: where to put the snails? Killing the snails afterwards would make laborious collecting unnecessary. The most sensible thing is to put the snails on a remote piece of land. If you have ducks or geese nearby, you can also feed the snails to them.

Set up beer traps

Beer traps attract snails from far away - only very few drown in them! If you use this method to fight snails, use the beer trap as an incentive to attract the snails away from the vegetable patch: Set the beer trap far away from the bed to be protected. But be careful: the smell also attracts snails from outside the garden, which can eat up a lot on their way and lay their eggs. You should also be sure that you don't have hedgehogs in the garden. They could eat the beer and the snails soaked with it and die from alcohol poisoning. From September (at the beginning of egg laying), it is also worth scattering snail grain a second time a year and destroying existing egg clutches.

Garden

care beer trap: catch snails with live traps

The voracious animals are especially interested in the young shoots of salads, cabbages, strawberries but also many ornamental plants. Nice…

Set up snail barriers

Snails need moisture to get around - dry areas are difficult to overcome. So pour as precisely as possible: no irrigation, no continuous irrigation, no overhead watering!

Snail barriers made of spruce nails, lime, coffee, sank, salt, sawdust or ashes are supposed to ward off the snails. But in the long run, the powdery stiffeners are no obstacle to a worm infestation. T. even the floor. Beet border plantings from herbs with a high proportion of essential oils (thyme, rosemary, lavender or also garlic) make snails crawl an arch - they cannot reliably stop them.

Build snail fences

Snail fences with edges that are bent outwards are effective protection against snail infestation in the vegetable patch - but only if the fence is completely and correctly installed (extends deep into the earth and is not overgrown by plants) and there are no snails inside the snail fence (soil is correct) loosened, all egg eggs removed)!

Natural snail enemies

The snail's natural predators are hedgehogs, shrews, toads and ground beetles. Create a suitable living space in the garden for the beneficial organisms. Watering nematodes also fight snails (especially the wetted field snail). Tufted ducks, whose hunger for snails would be very helpful in combating a snail plague, are relatively expensive to keep (species-appropriate).

What do snails eat?

Snails eat everything in the vegetable patch that also tastes good - and a lot more: Salad, vegetables, fruits - the younger and tender the better the slug falls on the crops in the patch. The best way to protect seedlings from the predators is with a hood (made of glass or cheaper with a cut PET bottle). But blossoms and young green in the perennial border are also eaten by snails.

• Simply cut the bottom off a 1.5 liter plastic bottle with a sharp knife (cutter, interchangeable blade knife).
• You put the resulting protective cover over salad seedlings or other vegetable plants.
• Press the protective hood firmly into the ground a few centimeters so that it cannot tip over (even in windy conditions).
• Unscrew the cover so that not too much moisture builds up inside.

Photos: Praxis-Press / Lonza Ltd. / Meta (R)

Source: himself is the man