The Keys to Battling Slugs and Snails

These five management methods will protect your plants from lean enemies

Silver paths give them: snails follow the garden and slide with their single foot. Like footprints, cold trails provide clues to the behavior of these mollusks: where they migrate, where they gather, and what plants are attracted to.

Snails may or may not provide such simple clues. Like snails, they emerge on wet nights but can retreat into the soil near where they feed, leaving no trace of their permanent hiding place. As mud traces indicate, the solution to controlling snails and snails lies in learning about their biology and behavior.

Humidity control is important

Snails and snails are closely related to shellfish, and all active stages of snail and slug life require moisture. Considering their water levels, snails and snails are remarkably well adapted to survive on land. During the growing season across the country, rain, fog, or morning frost provide enough moisture to encourage snails and snails, and during dry seasons, most gardeners deliberately water their gardens to grow plants. Therefore, in most cases, complete removal of moisture is impossible. Water management comes down to mitigating the impact of rainfall and irrigation. If snails and snails are a problem, if you water the surface, the plants will dry out the night before when those annoying mollusks move and feed. Where appropriate, use ground drip irrigation, which will dry out the soil surface. Also, make elevated planting beds to ensure good drainage of the topsoil.

When setting the plants, leave enough space between them and the moving air will dry the plant surfaces. Reduce the area covered by a dense ground cover or relocate dense plantings from the vegetable area. Trim downstairs fences and other shrubs so that sunlight and wind can penetrate and dry the soil surface below. Remove old boards or pieces of wood and other debris that retain moisture on the soil surface (unless you intentionally use them as traps). These provide a protective cover during the day and a moist place for snails and snails to lay their eggs.

Handle at night, trap during the day

Once you have done your best to reduce unwanted humidity and remove hidden spots, it is time to catch the flashlight and hunt. About two hours after sunset, is the perfect time to pick up snails and snails. Bring a container filled with soapy water or diluted rubbing alcohol. Captured snails and snails can be submerged in soapy water and disposed of in a compost pile or ritually buried in the garden, where they will decompose and provide nutrients to the next round of plants.

Handpicking can seem like a big job in the beginning. But focusing on areas that require more protection and going out at night as often as you can (snails may not be exposed every night), can have a significant impact on local people.

You should increase your nighttime travel by setting traps and checking them during the day. I found halves of grapes, sliced and placed sideways, inverted, unpolished clay pots to be attractive to snails and snails. If you use clay pots and leave crushed snails or two inside, it will attract others when it rots.

Place the inverted pots on the shade side of the plants so that the pots are cool during the day and evenly level the ground so that the snails find their way under the edges. Wooden boards or asphalt shingles — reflecting the sun with an aluminum foil on top of them — kept cool and raised from the ground with a pebble — also work.

Beer is a yeast well known for attracting snails and snails. Commercial yeast can be used for the same effect when mixed with water. You should periodically empty the dead mollusks and refill the trap. How to remove any extra glamor is yours.

Barriers reduce numbers; One last attempt at the bait

If you use energy in the trap, it makes sense for you to create some barriers around the snails and snail removal areas. Both do not like to pass dry or caustic materials, so diatomaceous earth, ash, and sawdust are spread on the ground and act as barriers until they are dry. The catch is that bad snail and slug problems arise when the weather is wet.

When I garden in the rainy season, my solution is to place thick sawdust as a partial barrier between the plant beds. If the sawdust is thick enough, snails and snails will be reluctant to crawl on it, and they will not lay eggs under it. To keep the barrier effective, I constantly add new layers of sawdust.

Since copper repels snails and snails, it is used to create effective and permanent barriers — permanently, that is, until some plants fall off or grow. Copper allows mollusks to cross the barrier.

If you feel you need to resort to chemical controls, use bait instead of spray. Place the bait in containers that only allow access to snails and snails, and keep containers out of the reach of children who may not be able to pick them up or play with them or eat them.

An easy way to avoid contaminating your soil with bait is to place a small amount of bait in an empty soup can and place the can on its side. Snails and snails enter, take the bait, and die in the can. Dead bodies attract more snails and snails. Young vegetable seedlings In the kitchen garden affected by the primary slug and snail, you should use the bait for more than one to three weeks, while the seedlings will grow somewhat. After that, the plants will be less susceptible to slug and snail damage, and you can remove the bait from the garden.