Environmentally friendly ways to murder snails .... kindly

I've always heard that slugs (and I'm assuming by extension, snails) love citrus fruits. So if you put the shell of a citrus fruit upside-down at night, then collect it in the morning, you will find it full of slugs/snails and then you can just throw it away, repeat the next day.

If you think land snails are bad, you should try getting them in your fish tank! Nothing gets rid of those bastards, and they kill aquatic plants.

Msolga, I have drowned many a snail with beer. If you have a bad snail infestation, a cat food can filled partway with beer can catch up to thirty snails or more overnight! (Once I caught almost a hundred.) The problem is that no matter how long you do this, you still catch snails…you never get rid of them! I had beautiful Hollyhocks and the snails seem to love them most. They chewed on the leaves until they resembled fine lace. I even tried poisoning them…now, after a four year battle with them; I think I'm going to get rid of the Hollyhocks instead.

Beer traps be the best.

urp

I use a hammer

Looks like beer is the go!

Too bad about your hollyhocks, colorbook. So what snail repelling plant might you replace them with?
And sorry to hear about the snail mayhem in your fish tank, Portal Star. Is there no place the buggers won't go?

Which makes me wonder: I've always understood that every critter performed some worthwhile function in nature's scheme of things. I'm now trying to think of one useful function that snails perform.

Another Saturday night and I aint got nobody.

I got some money cause I just got paid.

Oh, how I wish I had some snails to talk to.

I'm in an awful way.



(Buuuurp)

We need Cav... I'm sure he has an excellent recipe for snails.

So long as he cooks them himself, squinney!
And I Like your snail song!

Personally, I'd drink the beer and spray the snails with ammonia.

Ammonia, osso? Do tell ....

Not to break up the fun, but I found a website with a lot of ways to get rid of snails and slugs.

http://www.ghorganics.com/page13.html

That looks a very interesting & useful site, colorbook. I've added it to my favourites. Thank you.

Grape Juice: A new rendition on the beer trap is to use grape juice. For some reason slugs really have a taste for this. Use just as you would in the beer method and buy the cheapest grapejuice you can find!

Scraps of wet carpet spread around the garden will draw slugs like a magnet! Scrape off and reuse.


Interesting! And lots of other very interesting stuff in that thread, colorbook.

I just keep an ammonia spray bottle by the back door, and go on little garden forays when I feel like it... they drop like, er, flies.

Sadly, I have from time to time lost my poise and done overhand throws on to the well-trafficked streets to the front and to one side of my house. I generally try to avoid doing this when traffic is nearby.

I would think that the grape juice would also draw ants, bees and flies.

"Diatomaceous earth" is the correct spelling.
It is a processed (finely milled) form of a mineral deposit (a variety of limestone), composed of the fossillized shells of "diatoms"(small single-celled organisms that live in water). Its main component is silica...

Incidentally, the best slug inhibitor is having lots of birds around to eat the slugs. The presence of cats around your property/neighborhood enhances the habitat for slugs by chasing away/preying upon the bird population.

if you were collecting them in a bucket - where were you putting them?

they have a homing instinct so throwing them into the neighbours garden doesn't work! I read about an experiment where they took snails and painted a spot on their shells and released them some distance away - they returned again and again, some having 3 and 4 spots painted on!

beer seems the best option - but i suppose you would need to bury the bodies or you'd have inebriated birds

Ammonia diluted with water, I take it, osso?
(And I doubt you lose your poise, ever. )

Thanks for the information, Magus. And yes, I do have a cat, though a bit lazy on the bird stalking front.