Nail the Snails

Yes... it's that time of year again, out of hibernation come those pesky snails and they've been gorging on our seedlings. Once again we move heaven and earth to try and protect our precious crops. Pray what contraption have we come up with this time?

Well... we can't actually take all the credit for this one. We spotted it being used by the allotments near the train station but contraption it is and so far it seems to be working...

It's as simple a few pieces of timber and some chicken wire. We got the smallest chicken wire gauge we could get – it's never going to stop all of the snails, especially those little baby ones but it will stop the big buggers and lets be honest – they're the ones who chomp straight through your line of seedlings.

It's basically a wire cloche – cut your four bits of timber and make a base and then staple chicken wire to form an arch. The one above is over our beetroot seedlings. The first row got munched completely but the second row is doing well now it's covered.
Our rogue potato really needed some help – it was on the verge of death by snail. We cut a length of wire and then weaved four canes down through, and into the ground. You just have to make sure that you earth up around the wire where it comes into contact with the soil, make sure there's no gaps they can get in.

Hey presto. It's working so far.