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.

Utter Devastation

My goodness. Our poor potatoes. Only last week I was telling everyone how healthy and green they were and look at them today, what a sorry state they're in.

Oh, and who per chance do you think the culprits are?! Our ever friendly garden snails who for some reason, seem to have it in for us.

I'm pretty gutted actually, I mean some of the plants are just decimated. And this has happened in the space of about a week. They've been munching at the leaves below everything so we hadn't really noticed what was going on and then all of a sudden there's a big gaping hole where literally the plants at the back have collapsed. I think we'll loose some, two plants if we're lucky but maybe more. Not sure what to do with them because if they've got potatoes under the ground they'll just rot. So I guess we'll have to dig them up, not going to be easy though because they're right at the back.

I've just picked out about 25 snails and was going to put down some organic pellets but I think I'll wait until the thunderstorms finish.

I hate these things more than ever now. I thought I'd got them under some sort of control but it seems they've just moved to a different part of the garden.

Yeah. So pretty gutted right now. And I'd really really like it to stop raining please, the snails don't need anything else to tempt them out of the dark danky holes they live in. If you could sort that for me that would be great. Thanks.

Are snails taking over the world?

Oh my god... I'm quite shocked. I've just done my daily evening garden check-up. I watered our seedlings that are doing nicely in our grow tent and noticed that a few of the radishes seemed to have been nibbled. We've had ants in the grow tent before that lopped of the leave of the basil, apparently that one of the only plants that ants eat, jolly good... Anyways, I take out all the trays one by one and check them all and there were bluddy snails in there!!! Can you believe the cheek of it! Two of them and between them they've managed to destroy six plants, so that's six meals they've wrecked for us, yes very good work Mr.Snail.

So I go grab my litter picker (see previous post, a god send for snail collecting) and I go on abit of a snail mission. One hiding under the lambs lettuce, got that little bugger.

Then I go to where they all seem to live, by the clematis. It's climbing up a wall with some trellis and they love it there. I've kinda left them alone for a few days thinking, you know, as long as they stay there then they're OK but today I decide to collect them all. I start off, slowly, one, two, three... keep going, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen... thirty one, thirty two, thirty three... I can't quite believe how many there are. A total of fourty-six! I mean, come on, that's just silly. We must have a snail nest or something? I've had a look on the interweb and it seems that they can procreate themselves, and you have mini-snails in about fourteen days. Fourty six though! And you all thought I was making a mountain out of a mole hill.

So this weekend I think the clematis is going to have to go. Sorry Mrs.Clematis but you harbour snails and this is what happens...