Any garden lover can agree that there is nothing as satisfying as having a lively green home garden. Unfortunately, a thriving garden also invites a handful of destructive pests.
You may be out inspecting or watering your garden when you realize that some unwanted guests are wreaking havoc in your garden.
When you look closely, you notice that they have left behind a glistening slimy trail. Well, you have guessed it right. The pests destroying your garden are none other than snails.
Do these slimy pests inundate you? Well, here are nine natural tips on how to get rid of snail pests. Without further ado, let’s get to it, shall we?
How to get rid of snail pests
1. Handpick the snails yourself
Picking up individual snails and placing them somewhere far away from your garden might be the first step to totally eradicating snails from your yard or home garden.
But how will it help in getting rid of these pests? You may ask. For starters, did you know that a single snail can lay up to 80 eggs at once?
So, to make sure that they do not settle on your plants and lay eggs, picking them up and taking them somewhere else, is a great way to stop them from multiplying.
The best time to do so is either in the morning or evening when they are very active.
2. Create snail barriers
The body of a snail is very soft and vulnerable, and this is what helps get around.
What most people might not know is that you can use that against them by placing barriers around your garden that will prevent them from getting to and munching on to your plants.
The good thing is that most of the materials you can use as barriers are under your nose.
Irritative materials like eggshell fragments, rough wood chips, abrasive gravel, copper tape, diatomaceous earth, broken glass, pruned twigs, coffee shells, to name a few, can serve as great snail barriers.
3. Try putting up snail fences.
This is another effective way to keep out these slimy pests from messing up your garden.
The best material to use as a fence is a copper mesh or tape because the ions found in copper metal react negatively with the ions and proteins found in the snail’s slime, giving them a sort of electrical shock.
However, before putting up the fence, make sure that you check your garden for snails or eggs and get rid of them to avoid trapping them in and allowing them to continue damaging your garden.
4. Leave them with no place to hide.
Just like the other pests, snails try their best to go unseen.
Unfortunately, most of the things in your garden, serve as cozy hideouts for these snails like garden furniture, logs, bricks, as well as the decomposing leaves or and weeds in the garden.
Try as much as you can to clear away any decomposing leaves or plants and weeds.
Also, cutting back on the ground covering on your flower beds or young plants is a great step towards having a snail free garden.
Getting rid of caterpillars using pesticides
5. Water your garden in the early hours of the day
It sounds laborious, but I guarantee you that it will be worth it.
Watering your garden early in the morning, allows water to dry out during the hot hours of the day, leaving an uncomfortable environment for these slimy pests to reside in.
6. Set up snail traps
Setting up traps is a very effective way of getting rid of most pests, and snails are no exception.
The good thing is you can utilize most of the things around your home as excellent traps.
One of them is beer. Yes, that’s right; you are not the only one who loves beer. This is one of the best organic ways of eradicating these pests.
The smell of beer easily attracts snails. Try digging shallow holes near your plants, place a container full of beer, and then sit back and watch them slide in.
You don’t need to keep on emptying the container because the staler it is, the better. Other suitable traps include cabbage leaves, plywood, or rocks.
7. Why not invite some new visitors to your garden?
Sometimes, inviting other animals into your garden might be the best way to keep these creepy crawlers from destroying your garden.
Frogs, hedgehogs, birds are all snail predators. Therefore, try as much as you can to make your garden suitable for either one of these animals, and you will be bidding farewell to these snails.
8. Use plants that they hate
Of course, snails are known for chewing down plants and eventually destroying them, but the good news is not all plants are edible for them.
Some plants, like ferns, euphorbias, lavender, rosemary, hydrangeas, to mention a few, are very thick and hard to chew, so snails do not like them at all.
To ensure the remedy is effective plants either of these plants around your garden to prevent the snails from reaching your plants.
How to get rid of corn flies for good
9. Introduce more nematodes to your soil
There are obviously millions of them already in your soil, so it wouldn’t hurt to introduce more of them to your garden.
Nematodes are naturally occurring micrograms that in your soil. These microorganisms act as parasites to snails.
They either patiently wait for their host underground or hunt them down using a carbon dioxide mechanism. They then attach themselves to their hosts and release toxic bacteria, eventually killing them.
You do not have to worry because they are harmless to your plants. Nematodes are always purchased in forms of sponges, gels, dried granules, or clay.
They thrive in moist soil, so it’s best to sprinkle some water on your garden after putting the nematodes.
Any damages to the garden that you have worked hard on can be dismaying, especially if these slow but surprisingly destructive creatures have caused the damages.
Thankfully, with these tricks up your sleeve, you can get rid of these snail pests naturally.
Symptoms of bird mites on humans
