What Works to Rid The Garden of Snails

 WHAT WORKS TO RID THE GARDEN OF SNAILS?

It is not by chance that one snail turns into hundred, they have an average cycle of 80 plus times per year, some can lay 50 or more eggs at a time, but normally one snail equates to 480 in one year.  Snails do not need a partner, they have both organs, but they can fertilize with other snails. 
So this is the nightmare - Snails have parties with or without mates, and one snail reproducing equates to over 400 MORE!!!!!!  So it's a WAR, not for the faint hearted.  So what ammo do we use?   SKIP to #10 if you don't want the long version.  

Unless you are starting with raised beds with a perimeter border that's covered, and soil that has no eggs, etc., pests including snails will eventually be an issue, unless you are in a area where they are not populating.  I didn't have to worry about snails in Atlanta, but the Netherlands is a S N A I L  / S L A K K E N haven.  When it rains walking down a sidewalk you will have an issue in some areas of crunch crunch which are snails with houses, all over the sidewalks.  GROSS!!!! 

Since I am in an allotment garden with 100 or so others, those that don't work to control and rid their area, make it difficult for those that do.  Since our allotments are supposed to be totally organic, we are not suppose to use any chemicals that are not designated for household use.  

So what works? 

1.  Hands in your gloves and your trowel and pick them up late at night (with a flashlight), and in the early morning hours.  Dispose of as you choose.

Here the snails are huge, some 3" wide and 8 inches long, with of course the ones that are not fully grown ranging in various sizes, and the house snails, the babies are so tiny you can hardly see, but the adults with houses can be a couple inches tall or more.  A small snail can eat alot, but the big ones can eat through an entire stem on a pumpkin or cucumber plant.  My friend planted 10 pumpkins the smaller candy variety, they were well developed when she planted, around 12 inches high and 8 inches in leaves across, each plant was totally decimated, one plant had over 50 small and large snails on it, some the entire stem had been eaten through and it was just terrible to see.  When she set them out she didn't have much growing in her space, and nothing that they really like, so I guess the pumpkins were their SNAIL FESTIVAL.  

2.  The two plants that I have that they do not like are raspberries (with thorns) and blackberries with thorns.  I planted strawberries inside a circle of raspberries and they have done beautifully, now whether it's because they haven't found them yet, or if it is because they don't like the prickles from the raspberry thorns, I am not 100% sure, I did put some of last years dried shoots with thorns around them.  Everyone told me gritty sand, eggshells, gravel, oyster shells, sea shells, and none of those worked, in fact, the sand seemed to attract more.  

3.  I do use drie hoek on newspaper when it's dry, i just pin down the newspaper with stones and use the concentrated drie hoek, it makes a slimy mess of them and when I do it I can just with gloved hands ball up the paper and dispose of it the next morning.  I use the drie hoek instead of salt because it deters ants.  I also spray regularly or water with garlic water, I just mince up garlic and let it sit in the sun for a few days in a bucket of water with a net over and then strain and dilute with water in watering can or sprayer.  My hope is that it deters the squash bugs and other insects that aren't good, and makes the leaves not so tasty.  I have also sprayed wd40 on buckets and placed them around small plants, but the issue is them tunneling under, so now I just try to protect the stems as well by covering in aluminum foil or a banana peel with the inside peel against the stems and the outside I use canola oil on.  

4.  This is a battle here, so an old rotten board with newspaper and drie hoek work as a trap, and again, it's easy to pick up and get rid of.  

5.  Copper tape works to some extent, but unless it's a pot where you can put it on a stone so it doesn't get dirt and debris on it, it isn't so effective, and it isn't cheap.  I did glue down copper pennies on some pots and that worked better, but the new pennies are not made of copper.  

6.  Marigolds - I thought they were suppose to deter snails, but they decimated two 6" pots in two days, the only thing left was a bit of stem, so since the seeds were cheap I have sowed tons of seeds, and I'm going to use those as traps.  I'll update on my progress. 

7.  A quick story about the "19.99" covers, a few years ago there was the hype of these covers for plants, the idea was that the snails couldn't get to your plants.  Wow great, so this fool purchased and planted her lovely lettuce starts and put the cover on.  Wow first day amazing, not a bite eten, snail trails around the outside and on it, but none inside.  Fast forward to day 5, because these were starts I had done in the greenhouse, they were already beginning to ball when I planted, and I actually thought that would deter the snails also, I looked didn't see any snails and watered.  A few days later I went to the garden and was doing my weed pulling and daily check, the inside of the balls were full of snails, small snail and larger snails, and the outside also.  Every single plant was totally covered, it was a sickening mess.  I really didn't understand how that could have happened, until an older man said in Dutch of course, die slakken zijn slim (these snail here are smart), they will find their way in by tunneling under, and hiding under the leaves, where it's nice and moist and cool when the sun comes out, and unless you use a box that has a barrier in the bottom, on the sides and over the top, and assuming there are no eggs in your soil they will get in.  His solution, grow them in pots and hang them up, and check daily if one has climbed up the posts.  He uses a potting mix to plant in not garden soil.
For the rest of his garden he used a hand trowel with spikes on it to go over the soil on the outside of his beds, he said it's harder for them to crawl in the dirt than when it is compacted down, so they look for easy paths, i.e., stones to travel quicker and easier.  

8.  In really bad years I have resorted to baiting with beer traps (a plastic cup or tin can down in a hole so the top rim is the only thing above ground, let them go to drink the beer and they fall in, however here because the snails are so HUGE that didn't work, I had to actually use a flower pot with no bottom holes (a ceramic one), so they didn't climb back on by climbing on the top of each other.  The small cup and tin can just let them have a beer party, and they were laughing all the way back to my plants to have a final snack before the sun came up!!!!!!  The alternative to that trap is dry yeast in warm water, they are attracted to that as well.  The reason I know that?  In the US I used yeast in my compost to heat it up in the winter months, and I tried that here in Snailville, I ended up with a compost container full of snails, I had to take the entire batch to the recycle center because it was totally full of snails, all sorts!  Epic failure, but a lesson learned.  

9.  I use alot of essential oils at home, and I really want to do an experiment if certain essential oils will repel them if I keep plants or soil sprayed with it, but the issue here is the RAIN, most years we have rain at some point everyday, some weeks an entire week of mostly rain, it is much less this year, but I am holding my breath hoping for a dry summer.  

10.  So what are your choices for snail control?

A)  Plant victim crops on the outside of beds.  
B)  Beer or Yeast Traps
C) Cultivating the outer areas of beds and around the outside root areas of plants daily.
D)  Using drie hoek and newspaper or boards as bait (or salt instead of drie hoek) - But make sure it does not rain because salt can kill plants) 
E)   Using prickly items like raspberry branches to put around plants 
F)   Hand Picking Night and Mornings to control what you can see
G)  Plant Marigolds and plants they love as victim plants
H)  Garlic water to make leaves not taste so good
I)    Insecticidal soap for same reason as garlic water
J)    Resort to using organic pellets 
K)   Copper Tape 
L)    Luring birds to eat the snails (but beware they also eat your berries and other veggies.)

My conclusion is that A-L are all viable options, but I think it takes using ALL of those methods basically to control them.  The more you totally alleviate, the less that can reproduce. 


I think it's easier if you are not in an allotment garden, open compost piles with veggies attract snails, and many people think if they are eating there then they are leaving my vegetables alone.  There is no logic with that, because feeding them on demand also creates reproduction on demand which means they are multiplying much faster and developing much quicker because of a constant food supply on hand with no travel time involved to hunt for food.  So think if you have only 30 snails in the bin, 30x400 equates to 1200 new snails which turn into 6000 give or take a few.  I read an article that was written in England where they didn't want you to HARM THE SNAILs anymore.  Well world hunger is a thing, and the more snails eating plants means less food for all, so where's the logic in that?  What benefit do snails actually bring to a garden?  So far I haven't seen one thing that benefits from having snails in it's vicinity, certainly not my plants, so some hair brain doesn't want to control them, I hope they take over HIS HOUSE for a month or two, and everytime he walks they go CRUNCH under his feet and slime trails on everything he owns, then maybe he will help look for a viable ORGANIC solution.