Snail city

by Ellie
(Cape Town)

snails on the wall

snails on the wall

snails on the wall
snails close up

After the first rains the snails are out again with a vengeance, they are actually eating the paint off this wall ! They love it and congregate there. I don't know what eco friendly measures to adopt against them. Are there any snail friendly measures ?

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May 12, 2017
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starstarstarstarstar 		Eco friendly ways to deal with snails in the garden ?
by: Caroline

Wow, this is a problem indeed and it is so globally. I've found the only thing is to collect regularly but I never eliminate the snail problem, only hugely reduce the numbers. For this application to the task is at hand is needed because they breed so fast.. It is also nearly impossible to keep them away from your food crop seedlings. I've tried the broken eggshells and pine needles without much success. You can try it too if you want.
After popping out in the early morning or after rain and collecting as many buckets full as you can you can console yourself by remembering that collecting takes less time than shopping for poisons and applying the poisons to your garden, and its safer all round to you and your other garden denizens.
When you have your bucket of snails you can do any of the following in order of descending snail friendliness:
Throw the snails back in your garden far from your tender plants, and let them live
Take the bucket and dump the snails somewhere green and lush and neglected, like along the edge of a golf course or park, or near a river in the wild
Freeze them. They get exposed to extreme cold every winter, so its something they are used to, they retract, go into hibernation, and die without any stress, I hope, then throw the dead snails in the compost heap and feed them back to your garden, or put them in a bucket with water and ferment them anaerobically and feed them back to your plants, or put a few dead snails in your bird tray for the wild birds
Feed the snails alive to your garden animals like fish or chickens
Mush the snails up while alive in a blender and mix them with ground animal feed, either wet or dried.
Dip your hands in the snail bucket and smear the mucus on your face, its good for your skin (just joking)
Leave the snails in the bucket while you think of what to do with them until they asphyxiate.
Fatten up the snails indoors in a bucket, then starve them for a few days and cook and eat them. You can find instructions on culturing, cleaning and preparing snails for the table online.

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