Dealing With Slugs & Snails

• Put crushed egg shells around the plants

• Sprinkle snails and slugs with salt

• Make a border of salt around the vegetable beds

• Make an overnight bait

• Make a beer trap

• Use the captured snails to make a ‘family bug juice’

• Shred wire wool and make a ‘fence’ around the beds

• Go out at night with a torch and pick them off the plants

• Place a shallow bowl into the ground, so the rim is level with the soil.

• Fill it with beer.

• Slugs and snails love beer so they will crawl in and drown.

• In the evening loosely layer any of the following on the soil

• 2 or 3 lettuce or cabbage leaves, potato peelings, sawdust, 2 bread slices

• Early in the morning lift the bait and pick off the slugs and snails

• Dump them into a bucket of boiling water

• Either discard the water or make ‘bug family juice’

• Collect dead snails and put them in a bucket of water

• Loosely cover the bucket and leave to ferment for a week

• Strain off the water, throw the snails into the compost or bury them in the garden

• Use the water to spray over any living snails or in areas that they frequent

(This recipe works for any type of pest.  Only use one type of insect per batch)

If you do have an infestation of snails, the methods above will help.  But, if there are only a few and they aren’t doing too much damage, please leave them and let your mini eco-system thrive as Mother Nature intended.