Battling Snails
One of the downsides of gardening in an urban concrete yard is the constant battle against snails. The damage they can wreak is heartbreaking. Like the time that K transplanted his cherished carrot seedlings to a larger pot outside and, the very next morning, all that was left was a clump of bare 1 inch high stems.
You name it — I’ve tried it. I’ve planted garlic around high risk plants and I’ve run a snail pub (note: they don’t like lager). I have got snail hunting down to a fine art but I seem to have SAS snails around here. All of the books & sites suggest drowning the captured snails in a bucket of water but these snails (a) refused to be drowned even after 5 minutes and (b) escaped out of any water-filled container unless watched constantly.
In short, nothing seemed to have an effect short of poison — which I broke out again last week after they completely demolished 9 out of the 10 sunflower seedlings I planted out. But I really don’t like using something that is dangerous to humans or other wildlife (a legacy from having 3 toddlers).
I heard a few years ago that there was a safe snail bait called “Sluggo” in the US which is just iron phosphate but I couldn’t find it in the UK. After the recent sunflowers incident, I started googling again. This time, I found a UK version by a company called Bayer. Bought a bottle via eBay which arrived a few days later & started using it straight away. Planted some seedlings out the following week & 48 hours later they were still untouched.
Maybe I’ve finally found something that will help but that I won’t feel too bad about using.
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