WAR !!! on snails of mass destruction!

I got me a 1 million candlewatt spotlight to use on night hunts in the garden :~) Armed with that light, a childs sand bucket from the dollar store and a 24 Cent box of salt I have declared war upon these enemies of my garden! Remember that my garden is about the size of most peoples deck...The first night I filled the bucket! The second night it was about half a bucket and last night there were 18 lg snails and 5 small ones. 6 huge slugs and about a dozen little ones. I do believe I am making progress!

But they keep coming from the wild area beyond the back fence. I am thinking of buying a large roll of copper flashing and nailing it along the bottom of the fence to try to keep them from coming in. If I get the wider rolls I can bury it halfway like edging and half above ground. Since they climb the fence in mass to get at my plants I may have to add a strip high on the fence as well. Has anyone else tried this?

I am also using beer traps, eggshells and sharp sand. Any suggestions on other non poisonous weapons I can add to my arsenal ? The damage they have done this year must not continue! I sure do miss being able to have ducks!

All Organic............
Take a container, something the snails
can crawl into, pour some salt on it, then place a
small cup of yeast in the middle. The snails come for
the yeast and crawl thru the salt. I'd use a small
saucer or old microwave plate like some of the
microwave foods come in. Leave overnight and in the
morning, it's full of snails.

Now this may sound rather gross to some; but if you have an old blender, grind up the snails and put back into the garden. Use your blender for this purpose only .

Coco - I'm curious about the grinding them up part... is it suppose to deter them? I can't see how it would. I've always thought that slugs are cannibals and will eat each other. Ground up slugs seems like it would attract them.

Zany there's some new organic products out for slugs. They're pellets like the old toxic stuff, but these are safe to birds, pets and wildlife.

sorry; that was slugs that I was thinking of that you grind in the blender.

How about...
Diatomaceous Earth, and Sluggo organic slug bait (both available online or at garden centers), bran crushed up and sprinkled around the plants (slugs & snails eat it, swell up, and POP!), and the copper definitely a good idea...

This is WAR!

Good luck!

Diatomaceous Earth would be great but it is too expensive here! I will look at the garden centers again for safe organic pellets and see what happens with that!

ANewYorker, what kind of bran? and where do you get it? I have created a Small snail graveyard under the garden hose in the back corner and dump them there. I do occasionally find a slug trying to get to the remains but they are all heavily salted so he doesn't get far!

I will try the Yeast trap tonight and see what happens :~)
I will not surrender!

My neighbor provides me with sweetgum seedpods. They are round and full of sharp points that are painful! We both use these to keep slugs out. You can mulch a whole bed with them or just put them around susceptible plants. The slugs don't like to crawl over the sharp points and critters don't like to walk on them either. Of course here in Ohio a BIG slug might be half an inch long. I don't know if this technique would work on the 6 inch banana slugs I used to battle in the Pacific Northwest!

ANY kind of bran works! Take bran flakes (and moth balls, if you want - even better mix) and blend them until a dust or at least small chunks. If you don't want to use your blender, put it all in a ziploc bag, and crush with a rolling pin. Put it around the plants! Slugs LOVE bran; they eat it and explode! Good in a sadistic way.

If you really want to use the bran and want to get it cheapest, see if a pet/feed store has it.

This website has ideas I haven't even heard of...
http://www.ghorganics.com/page13.html

Don't let the slugs carry you away!

I think mothballs are poisonous so you wouldn't want to use them around edible plants. They might also be a problem for animals and birds, especially when mixed with bran.

We have 3 different slugs here. The banana slugs which are huge and ugly. A large grayish brown 2-3 inches and small grays that are about 3/4 inch. What they don't munch the snails do! They have me out numbered but I will winn this war! So along with the yeast I will crush DH's Bran cereal up tonight :~) The sweetgum pods sound good too but I don't think I could get enough around here , if any, to do any good. Now to check out that hyperlink in search of new strategic weapons....

The quack grass remedies sound interesting. I have plenty of that around here. Maybe I'll experimant with it sometime.

I just came across this on another thread:
http://davesgarden.com/t/68114/

That is another great link! I learned enough there to fight the good fight!

putting crushed egg shells around the plants or crushed pinecones also helps; anything that have rough edges.
Best of luck to you in finding something that helps.

I've always cut slugs in two with a linoleum knife, their pals come along for the feast and get the chop as well, but I've found out that they like PORRIDGE OATS, especially the finely ground oats. They go nuts for it and after eating the dry oats, they swell up and choke ... great stuff!!!

Happy Hunting ;-)


Wintermoor

http://www.cf.ac.uk/biosi/research/biodiversity/staff/wocs2.html

2 Squirt guns, Salt water, and 2 kids. Rinse squirt guns after use.

Try spraying their side of the fence with some saltwater. Makes the lizards unhappy too though and we love out bluebellies!

You may need to "rinse kids after use!"

Problem..or not...No Kids! But I an tempted to buy a big bag of salt and put it at the base of the fence.

But the good news is the population is fast diminishing :~) I only captured 6 last night and 4 tonight!I'll do a second raid after midnight and see what happens

i've just learned so much about slug destruction. thank you zany for starting this thread. now i was using scissors and throwing them away in the trash. now i can leave them, go back the next day and kill some more. ahhhhh life is good. i like the salt thing too. love to watch those disgusting creatures oooooze away.

Six cloves of garlic, 4 oz. butter, parsley, and a dash of white wine.

Sautee together and, slurp, snails all gone!

No Escargo for this gal! I'll eat snake. frogs or eel but I draw the line at snails or fish eggs.

Zanymuse I found this tonic to work quite well. 1 1/2 cups of plain household ammonia, 1 1/2 cups of water and a tablespoon of Murphy's oil soap. Put in a spray bottle, shake well and go hunting at night. You can also spray the base of you plants with it and along fence and concert. Our house had a bunch of lilies of the nile, so there was a bumper crop of slugs and snails. All I use is the beer traps and this spray. Doesn't smell to bad after a couple of hours.

This message was edited Friday, Aug 1st 2:37 PM

LADIES ... GENTLEMEN...
there are no fixed recipes to get rid of these denizens of our gardens, flower beds etc., and if one treatment works in your area, then use it.
If the big chemical companies had an answer to our problem, don't you think that they would have had answer already??

They don't really care ... believe me!!!

Don't spray chemicals ... please!!!


Wintermoor

LOL Wintermoor, that is the whole idea of this war. To collect a whole arsenal of non chemical weapons to use together to win the war. So far the grapefruit rinds have attracted as many as the beer traps and I pick them up in the morning, turn them over and salt them before throwing the rind into the trash. I also tried combining the rinds with the beer by using the rind as the bowl and it attracted a lot of the smaller gray snails that are harder to see at night than the big bananna monsters.

I can't tell if the bran has had any effect but by combining all the non toxic "weapons" I am finding fewer and fewer and seeing a big reduction in damage.

I am still putting eggshells out also but to be honest the snails do not seem to mind crawling over them at all. and although the copper seemed to help at first it seems they have decided it is not all that bad and I now find them crawling right up the side of a copper pot.