Snails and slugs in the backyard belong to the category of pests, since they not only harm plants, but also spread helminths from which pets suffer. Therefore, it is simply necessary to fight against little shkodniks.
Many people know how to get rid of snails in an aquarium, but not everyone knows how to solve the problem with annoying mollusks in the garden and in the garden. We will try to talk about this in our today's article.
Why slugs are harmful
Before moving on to the issue of fighting slugs in the garden, it is worthwhile to find out what harm these small mollusks do. During the day, you will hardly find these tiny neighbors in the garden on the site, they hide in humid places. And with the onset of night or after rain, slugs go out to "hunt". You can observe its consequences on the eaten leaves of lettuce and cabbage.
As a rule, mollusks like the most tender and juicy places of plants, in which they gnaw out characteristic irregular holes. In addition, slugs have more than 150 plant species on the "menu", so your garden is likely to be to their taste. They do not disdain mollusks and decorative flowers.
As a rule, snails are not interested in large veins and stems. After themselves on plants, they also leave traces of mucus and feces. If you notice such signs on your site, you need to urgently take action.
After all, if you let things take their course, you can get unpleasant consequences:
- Attacking young plants, slugs eat green shoots at the root, thereby destroying your labors;
- Eaten foliage causes restrictions on the process of photosynthesis, and plants cease to develop properly;
- Molluscs are also very fond of flowers, which directly threatens the harvest;
- After the visit of the snails, the outer shell of the root crops loses its integrity, which means that they cannot be stored for a long time;
- Violation of the fruit shell is also fraught with the development of fungal diseases;
- The mucus remaining on the fruit after the snails contributes to rapid decay.
Methods of dealing with the use of chemistry
So, we found out that it is absolutely necessary to fight slugs in the garden and vegetable garden, but how to do it effectively?
- Method 1. One of the most effective ways to get rid of snails in the country is to use ordinary vinegar. To do this, you need to take 9% vinegar, dilute it in a ratio of 50 ml per 10 liters of water, choose the largest cracks in which the slugs are hiding and pour the resulting solution there. This procedure is best done in the evening, when the snails are already preparing to go outside. The delicate body of slugs will not withstand an acid burn, and the pests will die;
- Method 2. You can use the drug "Meta" or "Thunderstorm", which contain metaldehyde. But keep in mind that this is a strong enough poison and you need to use it carefully. Therefore, we do not recommend throwing poisonous granules on the entire area up and down, but to put a few peas in the immediate vicinity of plants "tasty" for snails. For the slug to die, it will be enough for him to touch the poisonous substance;
- Method 3. Powdered superphosphate, scattered over the territory of the garden, is also suitable for the destruction of mollusks. For 10 m², 200 grams of the substance will be enough.
We fight slugs in an ecological way
And for those who hate the use of chemicals, there are also options for getting rid of snails. But to successfully solve the problem, you will have to make a little effort.
- You can also use the old grandfather's method - sprinkle the garden with makhorka or tobacco. Also, slugs do not like acidified soil. This can be achieved by scattering coniferous needles over the beds, which are completely harmless to plants;
- You can also add peppers to snail habitats. Red and black ground peppers sprinkled directly over the leaves and soil are an excellent option. Going out at night to hunt, slugs will burn their tender abdomens and, most likely, will not want to return again;
- The next method also involves the use of pepper, tobacco or ash, which must be poured into the grooves between the beds. Thus, slugs receive almost insurmountable obstacles on their way to the cherished fruits and plants, and, most likely, after they will move to a neighboring garden;
- You can treat the soil with another miraculous composition, which is extremely unpleasant for the belly of slugs. You can choose wood ash, sand, eggshells or lime, mix and in a 1: 1 ratio and sprinkle on the paths before the evening promenade of snails. If you use this method at least once a week, after a month you can forget about slugs;
- To protect the plants and vegetables that slugs like most, you can plant onions, garlic or sage next to them. Parsley, rosemary and bay leaves will also help scare off slugs.
Prevention methods
It is much easier to prevent the appearance of garden slugs than to rack your brains and look for ways to quickly and effectively get rid of garden snails. The main task in this case is to create unfavorable conditions for the habitation of mollusks, and then they will go to look for a more comfortable place for themselves, and your harvest will not suffer.
If you own a shady garden, or in some parts of your site there is high soil moisture, then snails can settle in the area. Many gardeners believe that snails are harmless, but this is not the case.
It is hard for many to imagine that a snail in the garden can be harmful. This small clumsy creature, it would seem, looks weak and defenseless, but it does a lot of harm to the crop. A person is used to being angry at flies, suspicious bugs and larvae, but in his eyes the snails look helpless. What can land molluscs do in the garden?
In nature, snails feed on various remnants of vegetation and fungi, but in your garden the mollusk will not bother looking for plant remnants, and as soon as possible will start eating fresh shoots in early spring. And when the harvest time comes, the snails will begin to slowly but very confidently destroy the long-awaited fruits. However, the harm of snails does not end there either - in the cold season, they move straight to your cellar. A dark, humid and cool place full of delicious fruits becomes a clam paradise.
There are several types of snails that often inhabit the garden - among them there is even a grape snail that destroys the corresponding berries at the time of their ripening. Other snails live either on fruit trees, feasting on fruits, or on the ground, where, in the first place, they do not mind eating berries.
Fighting a snail in the garden
Fighting snails is not difficult for several understandable reasons. Firstly, this creature is rather large compared to beetles, flies or ants. It turns out to be quite simple to notice it on the leaves of a fruit tree or on a currant bush. Secondly, snails are extremely slow. They will never be able to escape from you, even if you give them a couple of hours to do so.
However, you don't even have to catch snails, because it's even easier to lure them. To do this, you will have to sacrifice sweet compote, which must be placed in a wide bowl near fruit trees and bushes with fruits. It will take a long time to wait for the snails - for obvious reason, while the mollusk crawls to the bait, ants and many other insects will have time to eat compote from it.
However, snails will come sooner or later, because they have a very fine sense of smell.
However, the slug is even more harmful in the garden, which not only eats plants and fruits, but also leaves behind a layer of mucus on the leaves. After the visit of the slug, the cover of the plants is peeled off and deteriorated, which can make the culture very sick. Slugs look like "naked snails", that is, they have the same body shape, but are deprived of a shell. You have probably met such individuals in the garden that slowly crawl about their business and seem completely harmless. Most of them go hunting at night, so you can't even imagine how many of them are found in your own garden.
There are a number of methods for dealing with slugs and snails, so the easiest way is to regularly weed the area. Molluscs hide in the weeds and crawl out at dusk, returning to their place in the middle of the night. Also, another cunning method suggests attracting frogs that eat slugs to the site. To do this, you need to place at different ends of the garden vessels with water, from which frogs will certainly come to drink at night. It is they who will meet with naive mollusks, which will just go out to hunt your harvest.
However, it is sometimes very difficult to attract frogs, and one frog still cannot cope with an army of snails and slugs on the site. Therefore, if you really have a lot of shellfish in your garden, then it is better to buy a natural remedy for treating the soil from snails and slugs from a gardening store. It will not harm the soil and plants, but it will become destructive for the pests living on your land.
V. Kostenko
Almost any person is ready to admire a small and cute creature that quickly hides in an original shell when he feels danger. Antennae, eyes, soft body - all this causes interest, and especially in children who are ready to play with snails for a long time. But only one or two individuals found on the territory of the dacha is a normal situation. If there are much more of them, it is necessary to start looking for ways to deal with mollusks, because they are the most real pests.
Especially for each reader of the site, we have done a serious job and found the 10 best ways to quickly get rid of pests in the country.
Children against snails
Quite an interesting and extraordinary way, but it is the children who can collect almost all the snails in the country, give them only this opportunity. They will carefully search every garden bed and even lonely plants, collecting each new specimen in a jar or bucket. Naturally, it is better not to tell your kids that they are a serious strategic weapon against a summer cottage pest, well, or not to destroy pests with them, because this can injure the child's psyche. True, this can be avoided altogether, and after collection, simply take them to the nearest forest belt. These are not cats that find their way home, and therefore, after manual collection and removal of the snails, they will no longer return to their summer cottage!
Animals against shellfish
Here everything is already a little different, because some animals will look for snails on the site not only for fun, but also for their own food. As in the case with, the fight against which we described on the site not so long ago, hedgehogs and frogs can be used against mollusks, which eat pests of green beds.
You can also use poultry as a tool, or rather, ducks, which are very voracious. They easily swallow every snail that comes their way and quickly cleanse the dacha of them. But do not forget that ducks are not very smart birds, and therefore they will not bypass cultivated plants. Ducks, along with helping us, can do harm, for example, trample seedlings or pluck them for their own food. In addition, they are bound to leave a serious trail in the form of droppings. Find out for a good harvest of cucumbers.
Therefore, it is worth releasing ducks into a palisade or vegetable garden only if you do not grow anything special there.
Salt killing snails
According to the observations of experienced summer residents, it is known that these mollusks do not like salt, and not only do they not like it, they also cannot survive salt exposure. This is what you should take advantage of.
In places where snails were collected, where you saw their maximum concentration, pests will go out to feed in the evening or at night, which means that it is there that you need to sprinkle everything abundantly with salt.
If it is a pile of leaves in a garden, overheating weeds in the corner of a summer cottage, or even a compost heap, this method can be used. If you notice a congestion of snails in a garden bed where cultivated plants grow, it is undesirable to use salt, because it can destroy plants and damage the soil.
Fighting snails on strawberries
Cute-looking mollusks often spoil our strawberry harvest, and since they feed at night, and during the day they try to wait out the danger in shelters, then we need to deal with them with more thoughtful means. It can even be plants that will become the permanent protection of the strawberry. Even in early spring, when you are just starting spring maintenance of the site, plant mustard, rosemary, thyme, or even parsley around the strawberry garden. You can find out for a “healthy” garden.
This will create a certain barrier through which the snails will not go!
Even if you notice uninvited guests on the strawberries, they can be quickly collected and carried away from the cottage, these were 100% random mischief-makers.
We use sawdust, ash, sand and granules
You can fight snails in even simpler ways, the same as with slugs. These pests are very similar to each other, and therefore the measures of influence on them can be identical.
When crawling along a garden bed, plant or any object, the snail secretes mucus, with the help of which a simpler movement is created. If you dry out the pest's body or reduce the secreted mucus as much as possible, this movement will become impossible, and the mollusk simply will not go further, well, or it will not be able to move at all.
You can create such barriers with dry materials. It can be special purchased granules that can be found in specialized stores or on the market, or improvised materials - sand, wood ash, small sawdust. You need to make strips, necessarily closed around the perimeter of the beds, only 10-15 cm wide, choosing a convenient material. A snail, crossing the “border”, will not crawl even half of the “obstacle course”, which means it will not get to your greenery either.
Sharp materials in the fight against snails
Snails are afraid to dry out their bodies, but injuring them for pests is generally very scary. Therefore, having felt the barrier of sharp materials in front of them, the pests stop and go in the other direction, even if there is a lot of tasty and juicy food ahead.
As a similar barrier, you can use nuts or eggshells, which are broken to create sharp cuts and chips, as well as broken gravel. Glass could also be used, but it is very difficult to remove it from the garden and not get hurt, and therefore we do not recommend this method.
Another material that you can try to create such a barrier is old PVC panels for interior decoration. In the sun, they harden and burst, creating sharp chips that are dangerous to shellfish. You can crumble the plastic into smaller pieces and create a border with it.
Funnels in the fight against snails
Special plastic funnels have been on sale for a long time, which protect young plants from being eaten by snails. These are small plastic products made from a thin material that provides protection for the soil. When the funnel is installed, the pest simply does not have the ability to crawl over it, since an acute angle interferes with this. The snail also cannot pass under the funnel, because it digs into the soil for several centimeters.
Scaring off snails with mustard
They say that molluscs cannot tolerate mustard and do not even crawl near this plant. This was played by gardeners, who decided to try an even more radical way to scare away snails than to plant mustard around the beds. The recipe is very simple - insist 40-50 g of dry mustard in 250-300 ml of water, and after an hour, spray those plants in the garden that are most often attacked by snails.
The scent of mustard will scare away snails that will start to go to other beds, which means that you should immediately take care of their protection. You can also use mustard in terms of prevention, so that pests do not come close to young plants at all.
How to use coffee against snails
It is worth talking about coffee very seriously, since it is not just a way that can destroy shellfish, but also a means of destroying cultivated plants. If you do not want to lose everything in the garden, then you should work with coffee very carefully.
No, we cannot say that coffee grounds or caffeine solution are that dangerous, but they have a certain effect on young shoots and leaves, as well as the vital activity of insects that are useful in the garden. Therefore, if you are already desperate in the fight against snails, you can easily try using coffee, but if not, find another way.
So how do you use coffee? You can take the brewed grounds, naturally used, and use it to create a barrier around the plants you care about the most. The difficulty is that coffee grounds are effective for only a few days, and drinking enough coffee to constantly renew the “fences” around the plants is harmful. Then you can use a caffeine solution made from tablets or instant coffee. Here it is necessary to seriously reduce the concentration so as not to harm plants and insects, to about 0.1%. Next, take this solution and spray it. The very next day, the snails will not go to feed on the treated plants.
You can talk for a long time about how to destroy, drive out, kill or scare away snails so that they no longer spoil our garden and, naturally, the nervous system. But we decided to advise you on comprehensive measures of influence, which, according to our personal survey among summer residents, took first place. Everything is very simple here, you just need a little time and desire to deal with pests in the garden!
DIY snail trap (video)
If you follow these instructions, you can pretty well save the beds from the "raids" of snails, and therefore we recommend adding this page to your bookmarks and as needed advise friends and acquaintances:
- Even when planting plants, from spring, lay pieces of plywood or boards in the corners of the beds, which will create a refuge for the snails. Help the molluscs find their place under them, for example, by placing stops under the plywood so that a kind of void is created below. Then, after sprouting, check your traps every week and get snails from under them, which will sit in place all day, and only crawl out in the evening to feed. Slugs, which are also pests of the garden, will also gather here;
- Around the same time you plant your plants in the spring, take care to protect your garden as much as possible. Plant protective plants around to keep the pest out of the green shoots. So you will save a significant part of the crop from destruction;
- Routine maintenance of garden beds and flower beds already gives you the opportunity to effectively control pests. Think about how good wood ash is for the soil, and just sprinkle it on the area. Naturally, not constantly, but periodically, thereby creating difficulties for the movement of pests and enriching the soil with useful substances;
- About once a month, carry out preventive spraying of plants with complex preparations that affect several types of pests at once.
Just a few points, and the standard biological snail protection works. If this does not help, we advise you to resort to the use of special chemicals that will help put things in order at the site.
Fighting shellfish in your own dacha is not as difficult as at first glance. This is not a spider mite, which is difficult to remove from the greenhouse, and not even the Colorado potato beetle, which is full of potatoes every year. Snails are a serious greenery eater, but you can destroy it, especially if you are already prepared for this confrontation.
This year, the heavenly abyss has opened over our region: all the beds are flooded, the humidity is off scale, and, of course, the snail population has increased exponentially. The "Horned Invaders" began to zealously eat everything in their path. Plants with huge holes covered with snails look terrible. In addition, young shoots with completely eaten leaves cannot develop further. I had to remember again all the methods of fighting gastropods known to us.
We immediately rejected chemical methods of cleaning, because it makes no sense to take on copper-containing preparations and other chemicals (especially during the fruiting period), if you still do not get rid of the snails completely, sooner or later they will crawl back from the neighbors. The only thing that can be done is to periodically reduce their numbers and protect certain plants. Moreover, snails are also useful - in nature they play the role of "orderlies", destroying rotting waste. Based on these factors, we tried various gentle methods of fighting gastropods. 
Be ready for the arrival of the snail!
We have been meeting snails for several years now, so we have studied all preventive measures that can help any gardener to minimize damage from gastropods:Most of the snails are where there is a lot of grass, so we timely cut and weed out the grass in our area, not only in the beds, but also in the aisles and in free areas.
We try to plant most of our vegetable crops in high, fenced-in ridges, in fact, there are almost no snails on them.
We also tie up plants in a timely manner and put supports (this applies to beans, peas, flowers).
Unfortunately, during the period of heavy rains, it was not possible to do with prevention alone, it was necessary to look for additional means to control the snail population.
Serving snails with coffee
We believed American scientists and put a pack of custard coffee and a third of a can of instant coffee on our snails. Foreign researchers have found that a concentrated solution of coffee (double dose) has a detrimental effect on the nervous system of snails - it kills small ones, and puts large ones into a stupor and discourages them from planting. We tried sprinkling dry brewed coffee on the leaves and soil and sprinkling everything with a spray bottle, there was no particular effect. I explained the coffee fiasco for myself by the fact that caffeine did not stay on the leaves for a long time, it was washed off by rain and dew. However, when I sprinkled directly on the snails, they hid for a minute, and then continued to peacefully chew the leaf. Either we have "radioactive" snails, or the coffee is bad.
Draw your own conclusions. If you have nowhere to put your coffee, you can repeat our experiment.
Soldering snails
Next, we decided to try the "drunk trap" method, the easiest way is to make such a trap from a plastic bottle by cutting off the neck and slightly pressing the container into the ground at an angle so that the snails can get inside. You can pour a little beer or sweet juice into the bottles, both liquids attract gastropods with their smell. Grandpa, squeaking his heart, gave out a can of his beer and we set up a few plastic traps where there is a lot of greenery. Snails do have a craving for sweets and alcohol, but bottles need to be emptied often. “Enemies” enter the mortar for some time under the influence of beer, become lethargic, and then crawl out.
You can try this method if you don't mind the beer and are willing to put up with a lot of plastic bottles scattered around the area.
We feed snails and set up barriers
You can arrange a "hurdle race" for the gastropods, which will further slow down their already slow pace. Here are the types of barriers that we tried:We tried to mulch several strawberry bushes and mint with sawdust, the strong aroma of which did not bother the snails. It is believed that snails get stuck in sawdust and lose their ability to move. If there are no heavy showers, this tool works, but we do not like it, because rotting sawdust attracts garden ants. In addition to sawdust, you can use needles.
Another remedy is crushed stone, coarse sand and shells, barriers made of these materials impede the movement of snails. We sprinkled sand on several bean bushes and aster seedlings, holes in the leaves for some time, until the sand washed out, stopped appearing, and on the flower beds around which there are gravel, there are fewer snails. It turns out that the method works and for the sake of young plants or rare flowers that need to be preserved, you can try. In addition, a plastic canister fence can be made around the seedlings until the plant grows.
You can also feed the snails - scatter rotten leaves and stems around the beds, the snails will gather on a treat and you need to rake them out from there. We took the effectiveness of this method on faith, but did not try it, because we do not like to plant a trash heap in the garden.
We scare away snails with a smell
It is a simple tool that requires no additional effort. Snails do not tolerate certain odors, such as garlic, thyme, lavender. You can plant the garlic between the strawberries and other plants to ward off the gastropods. The main thing here is to correctly select the source of the aromatic attack, because for example, snails eat onions and basil without any fear.
Building friendships with hedgehogs and toads
This is a very funny and enjoyable way to fight snails. We feed hedgehogs - porridge, milk and other delicacies, and they hunt gastropods. We also have enough toads on the site, although we did not arrange a special pond for them, as experts advise.
We hunt snails - who is more
It sounds paradoxical, but the most effective way to deal with snails for us turned out to be an ordinary manual collection. We have identified the zone of greatest biological danger, the border with the neighboring area, where weeds are raging, it is from there that the invasion should be expected. There we put up a kind of barrier for snails - we lay out several old boards around the perimeter. After rain and in the evening, the whole family goes hunting.
A lot of "horned enemies" gather on the surface of wet boards and under them, we also collect snails from tree trunks, from barrels, from greenhouse racks, from large leaves of rhubarb and horseradish. At one time, together, you can collect 50-70 pieces without much difficulty, sometimes we even arrange a competition. Regular manual collection allows you to keep the snail population in your area in order and reduce damage from pests.
We send all caught individuals to a special container (canister with a cut hole) with a concentrated salt solution, in such a trap the snails quickly die. Some people throw caught snails in the compost, this is a wrong decision, because they can proliferate there. You can, of course, carry all the snails caught away from the site and release there, it is more humane, if it does not harm other summer residents. It is a pity that disgust does not allow you to cook snails, for example, in Burgundy, and eat, that would be saving for the budget.
A detailed plan for the control of snails in the garden and in flower beds and the prevention of their appearance. The effective ways are given by which you can get rid of snails in the garden without chemicals. And also a trouble-free method with the use of chemicals, which can only be used in flower beds, but not in the vegetable garden.
The season comes when the night eaters crawl out of their secluded spots to damage vegetables and garden greens.
Typical signs of voracious guests: irregular holes on the sheets, strips of dried mucus and lumps of feces. These molluscs are not only harmful to plants. They are carriers of dangerous pathogens of helminthiasis.
There are several ways to deal with pests.
How to get rid of snails in the garden without chemicals
There are a large number of methods that can be used to reduce the number of pests in the garden. They can be divided into three main groups:
1. Mechanical method
- Snails love wet places and hide there during the day. Moisten the pieces of gauze with beer or a sweet solution and spread them between the beds, covering them with large burdock leaves. Or dig cups of water into the ground level with it and cover them with grass. In the morning you can find snails and slugs there. They need to be destroyed in a saturated solution of soap or ordinary salt.
- You can also scatter dry, loose materials, such as fine sand, crushed egg shells, around the perimeter of the garden beds. Snails do not like to walk on such surfaces.
- Also, mollusks will not be able to overcome dug gutters filled with water. They will either not crawl in that direction, or they will fall and will not be able to get out.
2. Biological way of dealing with snails
- This includes cohabitation with slugs as their natural enemies. For example, frogs and toads. Build a small pond in the tree frog area. They will hunt not only snails, but also mosquitoes and flies, without causing you any inconvenience.
- Slugs are hunted by birds, starlings or blackbirds. Attract them in the winter with the help of birdhouses and feeders, then in the summer they will also fly to you and feast on pests.
3. Smells
- Snails do not tolerate the aroma of aromatic herbs. Plant garlic, parsley, or bay leaves around your garden.
- Irrigate the beds with solutions of pepper and mustard plaster, natural coffee.
How to get rid of snails in the garden using chemistry
4. Chemical method
- It should be approached only when other options have not come up, because the poison is toxic to pets and people.
Ask at any gardening store for metaldehyde. It is packaged in small sachets of blue powder. Shake the contents over a limited one square meter area. Slugs and snails will slide down there and die.
Important! After using the powder, be sure to wash all vegetables and fruits that grow nearby before use.
Prophylaxis
After getting rid of snails, prevent them from appearing next time.
