Seemingly harmless snails loved by children, but in fact - one of the most dangerous enemies Your garden. In addition to eating the leaves of cultivated plants, snails are intermediate "hosts" of nematode worms, which they carry throughout the suburban area. Therefore, the fight against snails cannot be postponed "for later."
You can find out about the presence of snails on your site by the traces they leave behind: the remains of feces, mucus and holes in the leaves. If you found something similar or noticed the snails directly, then it's time to start fighting:
- Collect these clams by hand (remember to wash your hands well after this procedure). Most snails are more likely to be found in cool, humid areas in the garden. You can soak rags in a fermented drink or fruit juice and put them right on garden paths... Inspection of traps and collection of snails is carried out in the morning or in the evening.
- Natural enemies of snails are jays, blackbirds, starlings, frogs, hedgehogs. Try to attract them to your site. To do this, you can equip a small pond or make a birdhouse. Hedgehogs can be attracted with dog food. Both hedgehogs and toads should prepare reliable hiding places for wintering.
- Near cultivated plants that constantly attack snails, plant mustard, thyme, laurel, rosemary, sage, parsley, or garlic. Spray vulnerable plants regularly with tinctures of mustard, coffee, tobacco, or hot pepper.
- Often snails do not start in the beds, but in the compost heap. In this case, use coarse salt. Spread it in the evening in dry weather, when many snails crawl upstairs. Do not apply this way in flower beds and garden beds.
- Scatter crushed egg shells around the plants to be protected. This obstacle will become impenetrable for the snails.
- You can use superphosphate and lime to fight snails. Spread these substances in strips along important ridges. Once on such a strip, the slug will not be able to move, since all the mucus from the lower surface of its body will absorb the above drugs.
- Build small water obstacles such as water gutters. A half can be dug around a specific plant (longitudinal section, the letter "O") old tire and periodically fill it with water.
- If green methods don't work well, you can use proven chemicals... Meta and Thunderstorm metaldehydes are used for these purposes. Preparations should be used with caution, as they pose a threat to humans and domestic animals.
Finally, I would like to remind you about prevention. Keep snails out of your area. To do this, remove the grass cut and pulled out during weeding in time, remove from the site all the stale stones and boards, under which the snails can find a safe refuge for themselves. Avoid constant dampness in the garden. Mow and harvest the grass regularly, loosen the soil, simultaneously breaking the surface crust of the earth with cracks.
We learn about snails from early childhood, but somehow abstractly ... from pictures in children's books, from cartoons, where snails are usually represented as funny and slow creatures.
Summer residents come face to face with snails, and they are no longer up to sentimentality.
They say that in the spring, on warm moonlit nights, snails languish with love longing and go to look for their betrothed ... Having found each other, the snails begin a love game. They stretch upwards against each other, touch each other with their horns and mouth. Then they fall, hugging each other, and lie motionless. Then everything starts all over again, until the act of copulation itself occurs, during which the snails press against each other and envelop themselves in mucus so as not to unstuck ahead of time.
Both snails are both male and female at the same time, so they inject sperm into each other. Before mating, snails already carry embryos in themselves. In fact, snails can reproduce. all year round... The breeding process is influenced by the weather: the warmer and more humid it is, the more favorable for snails. Then the snails crawl into different sides, carrying eggs in themselves, starting to dress in shells.
After 1-2 weeks, the snail finds a secluded place, digs a shallow hole in the soil and lays in it, covering them with earth. Then it crawls over the buried masonry several times, smoothing it to make it invisible. On this, her care for the offspring ends.
Most of the masonry is usually plundered and eaten different insects, beetles, worms that adore snail eggs. Of those eggs that survived, after 25 days, cubs appear in a transparent shell, which can break at the slightest touch. For some time, small snails live underground, feeding on the remains of the shell, then get out to the surface. Their shell becomes durable after several years.
Snails grow up to a year, and live 6-7 years. Snails eat everything, especially juicy green leaves plants. Young snails are even more voracious than old ones; they literally saw off pieces of leaves with their sharp teeth and swallow them. For the winter, snails pull out a hole with their foot, climb into it, scoop up fallen leaves from above, close a lid and sleep until spring.
Snails not only cause damage to gardeners, but also carry worms and tapeworms. Fortunately, snails have many enemies in nature. They are eaten by birds, snakes, mice, frogs.
While we are fighting them, in other countries they are considered a gourmet dish... They say that a garden snail costs 5 euros for 1 kg. It all started with the ancient Greeks. They bred snails, feeding them vine and grain.
Pliny the Elder wrote in Natural History that fried snails were eaten with wine before dinner to whet the appetite, or that they were eaten between feasts and orgies. The Gauls ate snails on. And in the Middle Ages, they were eaten, frying with onions during fasting.
At the same time, snails were also used as medicine for gastrointestinal diseases, for treatment purulent wounds, eye inflammation and long-lasting bleeding. In modern medicine in some countries, snail preparations help to neutralize side effects antibiotics.
In the 14th century, snails were first named a delicacy in one of the French newspapers. This is no coincidence: the protein content in the snail is higher than in chicken egg... In addition, they contain a lot of calcium, iron and fatty acids.
Nowadays in French, German and Spanish cuisine there are a huge number of snails for cooking: from soup to minced meat, salads and baked snails with cheese.
They say that up to 100 thousand tons of snails are eaten every year. Of course, everyone decides for himself - there are them or not. If you do not want to eat, and in the garden there are losses from them, you can simply withdraw them.
The manual method is best suited for this, when the snails are simply collected and destroyed. You just need to take into account that during the day, in sunny weather, snails sleep in a secluded place, and go hunting at night.
Near fruit and berry crops it is useful to plant garlic, lavender, thyme, rosemary, mustard and some other plants that are not to the taste of snails.
American scientists have noticed that caffeine destroys nervous system snails, and they die. To take advantage of this trick, you need to prepare a 2% solution of instant coffee and spray it on the plants. No wonder they say that all diseases are from nerves ...
Even around the beds, experts advise scattering crushed eggshells, gravel, wood ash, sand, sawdust. The aisles are pollinated with slaked lime - fluff.
Some gardeners treat their snails with beer ... The beer is poured into a low can and buried in the soil level with the ground. They say that snails are big beer lovers and by the morning they gather in traps. big company, having decided that it is necessary to meet more often ... The gardener can only extract them from there and destroy them.
And do not forget to hang houses for birds on your site, attract toads, frogs, if possible, hedgehogs to the dacha. One of my friends, seeing a hedgehog, treated him with milk, then two hedgehogs came, and she gave them chicken bones, which she began to take out every day, and piled a bunch of brushwood for country house... Soon, a whole family of hedgehogs already lived on her site - two adult hedgehogs and four small ones. But snails have become a rarity.
To lure toads and frogs, you can dig small pond, pile next to a bunch of last year's foliage. These animals are now often found in city parks and ponds, so you can catch a few of them and create them comfortable conditions at his dacha. Toads can be fed with milk, fed with pieces of cookies, bread.
And the planting in the garden should not be dense. In the aisles, you can put dry branches of nettles, which snails avoid. AND more light and the sun!
Observing these simple rules, you can enjoy the harvest yourself, and snails ... you can admire in a book or in a cartoon.
Did you know that harmless-looking, inconspicuous snails have 14175 teeth, with which they grind everything edible in the garden and garden that comes across to them on their way?
It is quite difficult to fight the invasion of snails, the easiest way is to prevent it by periodically carrying out prophylaxis against these voracious mollusks.
Fighting snails in the garden, in the garden and in the country is carried out different methods: ecological, mechanical, chemical and folk remedies.
*******
Fighting snails in the garden
Although snails do irreparable harm to the garden, they still belong to the category of garden orderlies. Recycling damaged by any pests, or dead residues different plants they perform an important function in the garden - they cleanse and heal the garden's ecosystem. Therefore, the fight against snails in the garden should be carried out by gentle measures, and not by their complete extermination.
First of all, you should limit the access of molluscs to plants, and chemical method extermination of snails should be used only as a last resort, and only pointwise, in those places where too many snails have bred.
Good gardening is the first preventive measure against the invasion of snails. It consists of different techniques, which include improving the structure and quality of the soil, carried out in a timely manner garden work correctly selected garden plants, periodic maintenance of garden hygiene, rotation of crops, well-chosen neighborhood of plants and much more.
All these measures will strengthen the plants, and, as you know, strong, healthy plants better resist disease and pest infestation than the weakened and sick.
Birds, frogs, lizards, fireflies, toads, hedgehogs, some beetles also help fight snails on garden plot... Therefore, involve these beneficial fauna to provide natural pest control.
To attract them is quite simple: when you see a hedgehog in the garden, treat him with milk, then he will come again for a treat, and even bring his family. Be aware that one hedgehog eats snails as much as it weighs.
To lure frogs and toads, dig a small pond in your area. Catch these animals in a city pond or park, and settle them on your site, creating comfortable conditions for them.
*********
Fighting snails in the garden
Eating foliage, gnawing roots and eating snail flowers cause irreparable harm to the garden - they limit photosynthesis, reduce the appearance of ovaries, and reduce the shelf life of a damaged crop.
A damaged plant is more likely to get sick with fungal diseases, in addition, fruits rot from the mucus of the pests. There are many ways to deal with snails in the garden, but it is best to use mechanical and environmental control methods.
Chemical method used only as a last resort, since it is dangerous not only for pests, but also for plants. Mechanical method the fight against gluttonous pests is to collect them manually, which is best done with tweezers.
We catch snails
You can catch shellfish using traps that are placed in cool, humid places. To do this, rags, old bags soaked in fruit juice or beer, cabbage or burdock leaves, boards are placed between the beds on the paths.
On a hot day, snails will crawl under the laid out shelters, you just have to quickly collect them in the evening. You can also fight snails in the country with the help of shallow containers filled with water and covered with rags. The containers need to be dug in level with the ground. The collected snails are destroyed in saline or soap solution.
Grape snails
Most often, grape snails live in the garden and in the garden. They have a soft body, so the fight against grape snails can be done with eggshells, broken shells, and fine gravel.
By scattering crushed shells and egg shells in ribbons between the beds, you will create unpleasant surface for the movement of snails, because the sharp edges of the scattered material will cut their delicate body.
You can also sprinkle 2-3 strips of superphosphate or lime between the beds - they quickly absorb moisture and mucus from the surface of the snail's body, thereby blocking its movement. But this method of struggle has a drawback - it is inconvenient to water the plants, and it is washed off first, by the rain.
*********
Snail control products
As mentioned above, the fight against snails on summer cottage if possible, it should be done by mechanical or folk remedies. You can place plastic gutters filled with water in the garden or in the garden.
***
Environmental Ways
In the garden, gutters with water are attached to prefabricated beds. Water for snails is an insurmountable obstacle, so once they get into the water, they can no longer get out of it.
The ecological method of pest control is to attract representatives of useful fauna: starlings, jays, thrush, hedgehogs, frogs, etc.
Not all plants are eaten by snails - they cannot stand spicy herbs. Therefore, plant garlic, parsley, rosemary, sage, laurel around the perimeter of the beds - they will scare away gluttonous pests from plants.
As a means of fighting snails, you can use infusions of coffee, mustard and bitter pepper. 2 tsp powder of coffee, mustard or bitter pepper is diluted in 200 gr. boiling water, cool and spray the plants.
They do not like snails, and fresh nettles, laid on the beds. You can also buy plastic wide headbands with folded edges.
They are fixed around the plants in the ground and that's it - the snails will not be able to get close to the greenery. You can also distract the snails from the plants by using old leaves and plant tops.
This pest control method is especially effective in greenhouses and greenhouses. Carried away by devouring this waste, snails "forget" about growing plants, so they can be safely collected together with drying waste and destroyed. Traps should be replaced periodically with fresh tops.
****
Modern and chemical products
Methods of dealing with snails are being improved all the time. There are, for example, headbands and self-adhesive tapes made of copper, covering material that has a copper coating - with their help you can carry out electrical pest control. From contact with copper, molluscs receive a mild electrical shock, which makes them reluctant to cross this obstacle.
It is quite easy to use this method in action: the purchased microorganisms are diluted with water and watered from the watering can of the planting where the snails live. All snails die in this place within a week. One watering is enough for a month and a half of action.
You can also fight snails in the garden and in the garden using chemical means, if nothing else helps. Chemicals for pest control are different, but more effective are the granules of metaldehyde "Meta" and "Thunderstorm".
The beautiful blue granules of these drugs attract and instantly kill shellfish, but you should be aware that it is also dangerous for pets and people. Therefore, precautions should be taken when using these drugs.
*****
Fighting snails with folk remedies
Fighting snails with folk remedies is carried out in various proven ways.
Salt treatment
The most common way to deal with these pests is to sprinkle the ground with salt or spray the plants with a saline solution, but this can cause the leaves to dry out or discolor in some plants.
Some gardeners and gardeners water the plants with a solution from a watering can citric acid or vinegar. The solution should be made weak - 25 gr. citric acid or 25 ml of vinegar 9% per 10 liters of water. Plants are sprayed with these solutions once a week, preferably in the evening.
*****
In the garden
Such popular measures like spaced short cans with lemonade, fermented compote or beer.
Banks are dug in flush with the ground in places where snails accumulate. Molluscs, attracted by the smell, are stuffed into jars overnight, and they cannot get back out. A good effect is given by ash scattered around the plants or dry coarse sand.
In greenhouses and hotbeds folk remedies it is recommended to spray the soil with garlic infusion: 50 gr. garlic is ground in a meat grinder and infused in 10 liters of water. Then they mix, filter and water the passage between the beds and the beds themselves.
****
On strawberries
You can fight snails on strawberries like this: sprinkle the ground with spruce needles or put a thick layer of pine and spruce paws on the garden bed. Spruce and pine needles provide good protection against snails, and in addition protect the soil from drying out and fertilize it.
The collected snails are placed in a salt solution, washing powder or kerosene. Do not place live snails in compost heaps- v favorable conditions they will start laying eggs.
Dig up the ground in the spring, thereby destroying the clutches of eggs laid by snails. 1-2 times a month it is necessary to loosen the soil, weed out and remove them from the garden.
http://vk.com/vo_sadu_li?w=wall-88305316_27256
This year, "the heavenly slabs have opened up over our region": all the beds are flooded, the humidity is off scale, and, of course, the number of snails has increased by geometric progression... 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, there are benefits from snails - 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 more than a year, 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 the most vegetable crops on the high fenced ridges, there are, in fact, 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. Overseas 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 introduces large ones into a stupor and scares away 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 placed several plastic traps where there is a lot of greenery. Snails do have a craving for sweets and alcohol, but the 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 do not mind beer and are ready to put up with big amount plastic bottles scattered over the site.
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 fence can be made around the seedlings from plastic canister at a time until the plant gains growth.
You can also feed the snails - scatter rotten leaves and stems around the beds, the snails will gather on a treat and from there you need to rake them out periodically. 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 the fight against 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 the rain and in evening time 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 racks of greenhouses, from large leaves 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, this 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.
Summer residents and people who have household plots, they know very well that snails and slugs are very harmful not only to plants, but also to animals, as they carry helminthiases that affect them.
These shellfish can feed on over 150 types of vegetables and berries. The process of plant photosynthesis is limited, after the snails eat the foliage, and if they feast on flowers, then the number of ovaries is much reduced, they gnaw out the fruits of the plants, which shortens the shelf life of the crop. But, besides all this, the mucus that slugs leave leads to rotting of the fruit.
Although mollusks act as orderlies of summer cottages (they can get rid of fallen leaves and dead plants), their number must be controlled and, if necessary, reduced.
You can fight these pests in the following ways:
- Mechanical.
- Environmental.
- Chemical.
Chemical method getting rid of slugs and snails is the most extreme, for example, the use of metaldehyde can be attributed here. This chemical is very attractive to the shellfish and then kills them. "Thunderstorm" and "Meta" - granules blue, which are designed to handle two square meters, they are packaged in small bags.
From the territory mentioned above, absolutely all mollusks will crawl to eat and die there. But metaldehyde is a very strong poison, so it is dangerous for the health of pets and people. For this reason, not only pets should not be allowed into the territory that has been treated with this drug, but all fruits and vegetables with herbs for eating must be very thoroughly rinsed with running water.
Ecological way the fight is a little easier, it consists in attracting to the site natural enemies shellfish. Snails and slugs are also food for animals such as hedgehogs and toads. In order for snails to be destroyed by toads, they will have to do small body of water on your site, and to bait hedgehogs you will need to stock up on dog food. So that toads and hedgehogs are constantly on your site, they need to make a place for wintering, then they will protect your territory from unwanted guests for a long time.
And also birds can help you in this difficult matter. Jays, starlings, wagtails and blackbirds are very fond of garden pests. In order for the birds to fly to the site, it is necessary to restore the feeders and birdhouses. If the birds are taught to eat on your site in the winter, they will do it there in the summer.
Snails and slugs are very odorless. spicy herbs... Therefore, sage, laurel, rosemary, parsley or garlic can be sown along the length of the row, these plants will scare away pests. And you can also spray the rows with infusions of coffee, mustard and hot pepper (for two hundred grams of boiling water, you need to take two teaspoons of powder). Molluscs don't like nettles either; to scare them away, they need to be laid out on the beds.
Mechanical method the fight against molluscs, is a collection of snails with your own hands, tweezers will help you with this. Since these nocturnal pests, during the day, really need places where moisture and coolness are present, traps can be made for them. To do this, you need to put leaves, boards, old bags or rags of burdock or cabbage between the beds, which must first be soaked in fruit juice or beer. Small pests will crawl under such shelters during the day, and with the onset of evening they can be collected. You can also dig small containers into the ground, pour liquid into them and cover. A strong saline solution or soap solution is suitable for killing shellfish.
Grape snails and slugs have a very soft body and this is also often used in the fight against them. Around plants, where pests often appear, it is necessary to scatter dry porous material, it can be fine gravel or crushed egg shells, in this way, a very unpleasant surface will be created for the movement of mollusks.
Superphosphate or lime - effective remedy from snails, they are very unpleasant for soft-bodied pests, these components must be poured into two or three strips at a distance of 15 centimeters. With these preparations, mucus and moisture from the body of snails are very quickly absorbed, as a result of which their movement is blocked. But this means of struggle will cease to work after the first rain.
Water is an insurmountable obstacle for slugs and snails. Such an obstacle can be made by a method of artificial origin: for this, it is necessary to fill plastic containers with water and attach them to prefabricated rows. Snails and slugs will not be able to overcome such an obstacle, or if they get into the water, they will not be able to get out of it.
Prevention of pests in the country
It is much easier to prevent an invasion of small pests than to deal with it. The main goal of preventive work is to create a poor habitat for shellfish.
All these actions must be done throughout the growing season. All residues that remain after harvesting must be removed, through this garden pests will be left without food and winter shelter.
Fighting snails with folk remedies
- Salt cultivation- the most common pest control option. To do this, you need to sprinkle the land where the snails live with salt or spray the plants with a saturated saline solution, but this can dry out the plants.
- Fighting with citric acid... The spray solution must be weak.
- Can put cans of lemonade or dark beer in the garden, and fermented compote is also suitable.
- You can fight pests on strawberries as follows: sprinkle the soil with spruce needles or put a big spruce paws.