For many garden owners, snails in the vegetable patch are a creeping nightmare when they attack the lettuce plants. Some hobby gardeners quickly resort to chemical pesticides such as snail cores – but this is not absolutely necessary. There are also some home remedies that can be used to fight snails effectively but naturally.
Fight Snails Naturally
With a snail plague in the garden, you don’t always have to use the poisonous slug pellets. Even the iron-III-phosphate-based remedies against snails in the garden, which are declared “harmless for pets,” can cause severe poisoning in cats and dogs if they are ingested in large quantities.
At the latest, when small children happily conquer the garden, the chemical snail protection is obsolete. Alternatively, hobby gardeners can use natural home remedies for snails and fight them in this way.
Home remedies for snails: beer trap, coffee grounds, and lots of suns
Did you know that snails are attracted to beer? In addition to ready-made beer traps from the trade, the somewhat less decorative method also works: bury the half-full beer bottle in the ground up to the neck.
Coffee grounds are a little less brutal than the deadly beer trap. This is why snails usually give a wide berth. Therefore distribute the contents of the cooled coffee filter around the plants. Lime, sawdust, and bark mulch also deter snails.
Sun-exposed beds are also unpopular with pests. Even if this means a little extra effort when watering, the dry and warm environment also prevents snails from looking for food in the bed.
Lure natural enemies of snails into the garden
Ideally, if you live in the country and run, ducks are among your pets. The chatterboxes make short work of the pests and put snails right at the top of the menu. Hedgehogs are also one of those animals.
If contrary to expectations, it does not succeed; the reason is probably the type of snail: While the native red slug is a delicacy, the massive slime of the deceptively similar Spanish slug makes natural control a thing of the past. Then a snail fence from the hardware store can help.
How can you prevent snails in the garden?
Successful snail fighters know: if you dig up the clutches of the voracious reptiles in autumn, you will have far fewer uninvited guests in the garden in spring. You should preferably look under planters and the rain barrel and in cracks and crevices in the earth and under loose stones.
A snail lays up to 400 small, white eggs over several days in autumn. The only thing that helps is collecting and throwing away or feeding the birds in the garden openly.
A raised bed can also prevent your vegetables from being bitten by snails. The higher, the better. And if you prefer to stay on the ground, keep the area around the plants as dry and crumbly as possible and only water directly on the root ball.
Sink the small plastic pots of the plants you have moved into the ground very close and pour the water directly into them.
Tip: Incidentally, rosemary and thyme, houseleek, and stonecrop drive away insatiable snails in the garden decoratively and reliably. Include these plants in your bed planning in spring.
