Certain types of snails in the garden can leave behind nasty feeding damage. If you want to protect your flowers and bed, you should follow these tips.

The most important things at a glance

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• Slug pellets are the most effective method
• Slug pellets: Pay attention to the active ingredients
• Coffee drives away snails
• Beer traps against snails are not recommended
• Wet sacks or leaves as a collection point
• Dry paths as a barrier
• Snail fences against the pests
• Animal-friendly method with plants
• Fight snails with nematodes
• Snail eggs survive the winter

If Snails attack the well-tended lettuce plants and flowers, often only a holey framework remains. Especially in rainy weather , the molluscs attack the garden plants. However, slug pellets are not always advisable as an antidote.

Slug pellets are the most effective method

Many garden owners use slug pellets to get rid of the voracious garden pests. The agent attracts the snails with its sweet smell, the animals eat the grain and die.

This method is effective though. However, the poison is not only effective against annoying slugs (Arionidae) such as slugs or field slugs, but also against beneficial snail species such as Roman snails and slugs (tiger slugs). These mollusks are very useful in the garden as they keep things tidy and even fight off the unwanted slugs. More on that in this article .

Slug pellets are also dangerous for dogs, cats and other animals, as well as for children. The poison can therefore not only cause great damage to snails. If they consume the poison, severe symptoms of poisoning can occur. In addition, predators of slugs, such as hedgehogs and birds, die when they eat slugs that have previously eaten slug pellets. More on that in this article .

Slug pellets: Pay attention to the active ingredients

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However, the different active ingredients against snails are not equally dangerous. Agents based on ferric phosphate are less toxic than slug pellets with metaldehyde or methiocarb, but fight the pests just as effectively.

You should only trust the package label “Non-toxic for pets” to a limited extent. If dogs and cats ingest too much of the drug, they will still show signs of poisoning.

There are various ways to keep snails away from the bed without using chemicals and to fight them. According to Nabu, it has been scientifically proven that low concentrations of coffee drive animals away. The caffeine in coffee is deadly in high concentrations.

You can spread coffee grounds over a large area or spread them around individual plants in a protective ring. Alternatively, you can spray strong coffee beans on the leaves to keep the voracious mollusks from damaging your plants.

Beer traps against snails are not recommended

Beer traps are often recommended as a tried and tested remedy against snails. To do this, vessels half filled with beer are buried in the garden. The snails are attracted by the smell of beer, fall into the vessel and drown. The problem: Beer is so tempting that the snails from the neighbor’s garden are attracted to its smell and you end up with more snails in your garden than before.

Wet sacks or leaves as a collection point

If you are armed with a bucket and want to hunt snails and collect the animals from paths and plants, it is best to do this in the evening or early in the morning. This is when the animals are most active.

You can also set a trap for the snails: the animals like to gather in wet sacks during the day. They also often hide under the laid out leaves of lettuce, cabbage and rhubarb. From there, collection is particularly easy. Or you give them supposed hiding places such as roof tiles or boards in the vegetable patch or flower bed. Here you can then collect the mollusks in bundles.

A hit with a sharp tool or pouring hot water over them will kill the animals quickly. You should definitely collect dead snails and put them on a secluded meadow or in the forest as food for birds such as blackbirds and parents as well as hedgehogs . Do not leave the killed snails in your garden – they serve as food for their conspecifics and thus attract them.

Dry paths as a barrier

Since snails avoid dry paths, the area around the vegetable beds should be kept as open and dry as possible. You can sprinkle wood shavings, rock flour, ash or lime to make it more difficult for the snails to get into the bed. Their slime is not enough to cross this rough terrain without taking damage.

Snail fences against the pests

Snail fences are also a very effective way to deter snails. Most are made of metal, protrude about ten centimeters from the ground and have an edge or curve at the top that the snails cannot overcome. The metal is too smooth for the animals.

Disadvantage: Only the vegetable beds with a fence are protected. The snails are still out and about in the rest of the garden. Nevertheless, this is an animal-friendly and long-term method of snail control.

Animal-friendly method with plants

You can also make life difficult for the snails with certain plants. The mollusks avoid, for example , nasturtium and the phacelia, which is also called Tufted Beauty or Bee Willow. Its blue flowers also attract bees and other nectar-loving beneficial insects to the garden.

Thyme , savory, chamomile, sage and rosemary are also plants that are unattractive to the animals and are therefore well suited for fighting snails. Planted between the vegetables, they can at least contain the infestation. Snails also do not like ferns, grasses and downy leaves. These plants do not like snails.

Fight snails with nematodes

Nematodes help against almost all pests in the garden. Likewise against snails. These are roundworms that are found in the soil and on plants, among other things. They are a biological, natural control method.

The PH nematodes (Phasmarhabditis californica) are scattered on the soil on which the snails move. This means that the nematodes can penetrate the body openings (e.g. the mantle cavity) into the snails. There, the parasites attack and destroy the organism of the mollusk. The snails don’t die immediately. Instead, the snails stop feeding after three to four days and starve to death.

Snail eggs survive the winter

A slug can lay up to 500 eggs in a year – and thus produce several new generations at once. Because the clutches of ten to 30 eggs each develop after two to four weeks under favorable conditions. These offspring are capable of reproduction after a good six weeks.

The last eggs are laid by the mollusks in autumn – from which new offspring hatch in the following year. Because Snail Eggs Survive temperatures as low as minus 20 degrees – adult snails can withstand minus ten degrees. Mild winters result in such a large number of the pests.

Source:uslifestyler

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