The War against the Snails

Sticky keys: o, r
In the last few weeks, weeding and doing other stuff in the garden I have noticed there are a _lot_ of snails about. Not surprising given the weather really. There are also a lot of baby snails. They ate my daffodils and I picked a whole nest of them off the cherry tree. So on Saturday when I planted a whole heap of stuff (three kinds of beans, lettuce, tomatoes, capsicums, asian greens and watermelons) you would have thought that I would have done something to keep the snails off them. But I didn't, and the next morning when I went out one capsicum seedling, and two chinese cabbages had been chewed down to nubs. I think we did pretty well actually.

So then I went nuts with the snail pellets, which I always feel guilty about, because we try to keep our house and house and garden as free of poisons as possible. However I've tried eggshells and they don't work that well, and Andy refuses to sacrifice beer to the holy purpose. And I was somewhat comforted to read today that some organic gardeners consider metaldehyde snail pellets to be organic because the stuff does not linger in the soil. However, if birds or cats or dogs eat them it can be fatal. Anyway, now I have discovered that coffee grounds are also good for deterring snails. If there is one thing Andy does it is produce coffee grounds, so I think this is a promising strategy. Snails - prepare to be caffeinated!