snails

Lord_Gardener

Becles wrote: »

Has anyone else noticed there are masses of snails around this year?

The man next door doesn't really do gardening, just keeps the place tidy. He's got this shrub under his front window, which is dense and fast growing and it appears to be infested with snail. My window is floorlength and the snails crawl out of the shrub, onto my window ledge and up my front window - uurrgggh! It's rained during the night, and I've counted 9 on the window already.

We've just redone our front garden and planted some new plants, and I'm worried about the snails eating them. What is the best way of keeping them off my garden and off the window? Needs to be a pet friendly method, as we have dogs and also child friendly.

Yes, and slugs! We find 'snail & slug hunts' are most effective at rapidly reducing the populations - bag and bin. NB set up traps - up turned pots, boards, etc to help with this. Also encourage, frogs and hedgehogs (HH like dog food as well!) to keep population down.

davetrousers

You could collect the snails and eat them.

Hepcat

Whilst trapping and collecting to bag and bin does keep numbers down it's a shame to waste free protein (moneysaving alert).

Whilst slugs need drowning in beer or bagging and binning, snails can be delicious. You need to purge them first (clear out the gut) which just involves feeding them a single item diet. I can expand on how to do this if people are interested.

Once you've got your snails ready to cook, it's just boiling in some hot water and you're ready to use them. Then the choice is yours, fry some garlic in butter, add a glass of white wine and snails for a couple of minutes or use them in risotto, pasta, paella...

Hepcat

globbits

Planteria.com is an excellent resource for garden lovers and may be helpful in tackling the snail problem. HTH

~Chameleon~

Don't throw them away :eek: - Feed them to the thrushes!!!!

I have great fun every morning rounding up the snails and throwing them onto the lawn for the thrushes to come and feed on. Just make sure there's a stone or hard surface nearby for them to bash the shells on to get to the juicy flesh inside

Becles

My neighbours have gone on holiday this afternoon. They've got a vendetta against us as they objected to us block paving our drive (long story), so they go out of their way to be horrid to us. Hubby has just asked if we can collect the snails and post them through their letter box :eek: :rotfl:

Moneybubbles

I tend to throw them into the empty garden!! I think it has been so wet this year (or maybe the fact I have really taken up gardening this year!) the snails and slugs have come to get us lol

I use the growing success pelets now (as I'm growing my own veg and don't want it eaten!) and have the 'beer traps' around to (yep very smelly on emptying _pale_ )

globbits

I really have to apologise about the link I gave - it appears the Moderators have allowed 700 or so !!!!!!/drug spammers to gain access. Please disregard my link.

mapcr77

Use the pellets (the pet friendly ones). I tried coffee, hair, grit, beer traps and nothing works as well as the pellets. Plus, pigeons killed my seedlings while trying to get to the crushed eggshells! So that was the worst method of the lot...

As for wasting valuable protein, I actually prefer to throw some of the slugs and snails into the compost bin, in there they're welcome to eat as much as they please!
But now that slugs are under control, my problem is aphids... :eek:

Good luck!

Zazen999

Mapcr77 - be careful about putting them in the compost bin - snail eggs in the compost - not a good idea!