How to Get Rid of Garden Snails Naturally

Keeping snails from devouring your vegetable garden is a war almost every gardener faces and that war is compounded twofold when opting to fight it chemical free; but it can be won. While you can never entirely rid your garden of snails and slugs you can keep them away for the most part. Here are a few organic, all natural and chemical free methods for fighting an infestation of garden snails and slugs.

Toads, Bugs and Insects, Oh My!

You can fight snails in your vegetable garden by creating an environment with insects, bugs and animals that dine on snails and slugs including toads, turtles, lizards, birds, garter snakes, hedgehogs, ducks, geese, ground beetles and centipedes.

The best scenario for getting rid of garden snails without using chemicals, the predator way, is to designate a small area near your garden as a pond or habitat that is conducive to the above mentioned predators. Instructions for creating garden ponds and incorporating snail predators into your garden can be found with further internet research.

Barrier Protection

Barrier protection is probably one of the easiest ways to keep snails and slugs from eating freely from your garden.

One way to create a barrier around the base of your plants is to spread a 2 inch diameter of crushed sea shells, sheep's wool, crushed egg shells, sharp sand, pea gravel or dry ashes around each plant. Components like dry ashes will need to be reapplied after rain and watering.

In a pinch, Styrofoam cups with the bottoms cut off can be placed around seedlings and newly transplanted plants to form a barrier.

Copper

Copper is known to put out a charge that shocks snails and slugs when they try to cross it. It may be expensive but it is a great way to keep snails and slugs out of your garden.

The easiest way to get copper in your garden is to spread a barrier of pennies around the base of your plants but you can also use copper tape, mesh, pipe and stripping.

If that sounds like too much work and money consider purchasing a package of non-toxic Slug Off copperbarrier strips.

Early Morning Coffee

One thing that snails and slugs don't tolerate very well is caffeine which is why many home gardeners dump their used coffee grounds in their gardens. The problem with this is that it takes at least 2% caffeine do any damage to the slugs and coffee has only .010% caffeine in it. Not to mention that over doing it with the grounds can cause mildew.

The good news though is that you can use the grounds to prepare your soil as a preventative measure. To use coffee grounds as a preventative measure for snails and slugs, pick up used espresso grounds from Star Bucks (Star Bucks gives them to home gardeners for free) and dump them into the soil. As you till your soil and turn it, continue to add pounds and pounds of the espresso grounds so that they are evenly distributed throughout the soil.Although it is impossible to get rid of every snail and slug in your garden these methods will help ward them off for the most part. That being said, snail eradication is a daily exercise and can help prevent and over infestation.