How to Control Snails in the Garden

If you live in area where there are lots of warm and damp places for snails and slugs to hide, you might notice an explosion of these little creatures around your garden as the weather warms. Snails and slugs are basically the same thing, except the snail carries its house around on its back. The projections that you see on their head are tentacles used to feel around their environment, and the two smaller projections below are the eyes. Their mouths are positioned so the snail can eat as they crawl over your garden plants. A snail has something called radula in its mouth for grinding up its food. This radula is like a rough tongue, something like a file with rows of tiny teeth, which it uses to scrape off leaves and flowers to eat. They also like to eat little pieces of rock containing limestone for the calcium they need to produce their shells. They usually feed at night and hide during the day. Snails can cause serious damage to your garden. Luckily, they have many natural enemies including birds, snakes and toads.

Not all snails need a pollinator, so to speak, and that means many species can lay fertile eggs without a mate. Therefore, one snail can populate a garden pretty quickly. Their eggs look like white jelly-like BBs in the soil or in damp, protected areas of the garden. They travel by undulating their bodies over a trail of silvery mucous, which they create in profusion. Other snails can follow a trail of mucous to find out where the food is located. Snail shells come in all colors and sizes, with some snail shells reaching 12 inches long. Slugs and snails can get really big in some parts of the country. I remember the first time I saw a 12-inch long banana slug in a garden on the West Coast. We are lucky to have the little guys that can't get much bigger because it's just too dry in these parts.

You may never get rid of all the snails, but there are a few solutions available to you. One is the cup or saucer of stale beer trick. Just leave it in the garden at ground level and in the morning, collect the drunken snails. Oat bran will kill slugs, so sprinkle some around the garden. Finely crushed eggshells and diatomaceous earth will penetrate their protective layer of mucous and dry them out. Of course dry dog food will attract them, but you will have to collect them in the evening as they congregate in the bowl. Cedar bark, oak leaf, or pine tree needle mulch will repel them, as will several herbs like rosemary, mint, and lemon balm. Garden snakes and toads should stay in the garden, as they love to dine on snails and slugs. Paying a neighborhood kid a nickel for each snail collected is a good way to get the snails cleared out pretty fast. If there is an entire neighborhood snail problem, an enterprising young person could really cash in. Just be sure they destroy the snails and don't let them loose somewhere else. Keep in mind that smashing snails will emit an odor that you can't smell that will attract other snails, so smash them out of the garden and put in the trash.

There is an environmentally safe product called "Sluggo" bait that turns into a fertilizer (iron phosphate) after a while, and is available at your local nursery where organic pest control items are sold. It is as effective as metaldehyde, a common poison put in snail baits that is a known hazard to children and pets. Sluggo can be used in a vegetable garden up to the day of harvest. Most importantly, keep your garden clean and avoid creating damp desirable places for snails and slugs to hide.