They move silently at dusk to clear out ornamental and useful plants. Slugs are a tough enemy in the garden that are difficult to fight. However, plagued gardeners are not defenseless against the voracious pests. These tips and tricks reveal how you can stay true to ecological principles when fighting snails and still gain the upper hand.
How can you fight snails in the garden ecologically?
To combat snails in the garden ecologically, you can create dry, light-flooded conditions, use snail fences or snail collars, use beneficial insects such as runner ducks or ground beetles and use home remedies such as coffee grounds or beer traps. Liverwort extract can serve as a deterrent.
Defense strategies – how to keep slugs away from the garden
Once slugs have found their way onto the property and laid their eggs, the only way to get rid of the snail plague is to take complex measures. By making your garden uninteresting to pests, you ward off the beasts in advance. The focus is on dry, light-flooded conditions, because the nocturnal snails love it dark and moist. The following strategies have proven to work well in practice:
- Surround the entire garden or individual beds with moving barriers made of pointed stones
- Secure the area with a low-voltage electric snail fence (€54.00 on Amazon)
- Water primarily in the early morning hours so that the garden is dry in the evening
- Planting young plants with snail collars
When designing your garden, make sure that no dark, damp niches are created. Consistently cut back shrubs and trees so that sunlight can reach all regions. The finer the garden soil, the less attractive it is for snails and their brood. Rake and rake the soil regularly, even in mild winters.
Protective aid from the animal kingdom – with beneficial insects against snails
Slug pellets and other poison traps only have a selective effect and affect other living beings. In the naturally managed garden, the chemical club is mothballed and the help of the animal kingdom is relied on to combat snails. These beneficial insects fight a snail plague with a lot of endurance and enthusiasm:
- Indian runner ducks in the garden make all other snail control measures unnecessary
- Let chickens run free so that they eat the eggs and larvae
- Ground beetles like to eat the brood of slugs
Other helpers from the animal kingdom are microscopic, which in no way affects their effectiveness against the snail plague. Nematodes of the genus Phasmarhabditis hermaphrodita are applied to the garden using a watering can to decompose slugs within a short period of time. In order for nematodes to meet expectations as a non-toxic snail control, soil temperatures between 10 and 25 degrees Celsius are required and the consistent avoidance of fertilizers with iron II sulfate.
Coffee grounds & Co. – deadly home remedies as a last resort
Under high infestation pressure from an escalating snail infestation, various home remedies are available to rigorously combat slugs. The focus is on two methods that, despite the absence of toxic ingredients, still have fatal effects.
Coffee grounds
Caffeine, even in small quantities, is fatal to slugs. In order to use the home remedy correctly to combat snails, let the coffee grounds dry after brewing. Then sprinkle the brown granules thinly on all infested areas. Please note that coffee grounds can lower the pH value in the soil. The home remedy should also be refreshed after every downpour. Tea-drinking home gardeners use dried tea grounds because tar has a similar effect on slugs as caffeine.
Beer Trap
The smell of beer magically attracts slugs. You use this circumstance to construct a deadly trap. To do this, dig an old cucumber jar or a comparable container into the bed up to the edge. Then fill the bottle with stale beer until it is halfway up. The advancing snails fall into the liquid and drown. To ensure that the seductive scent does not attract all snails from the surrounding area into your garden, the beer trap should always be used in combination with a snail fence.
Liverwort spoils the appetite of snails
Don't you want to condemn hungry slugs to death, just scare them away? Then Mother Nature has an effective remedy for you in the form of moss, which will thoroughly spoil the pests' appetite for your crops and ornamental plants. As green land plants, mosses do not have thorns, poisonous sap or bark to keep predators at bay. As a result, they give off a scent that snails can't stand. How to ward off a snail infestation with liverwort:
- Dissolve liverwort extract in water according to the manufacturer's instructions
- Spray affected plants early in the morning or after sunset
- Against a snail plague, dose the natural remedy twice as much if necessary
As is usual with all natural remedies, success only becomes apparent over time. Therefore, use liverwort as a preventive measure on endangered plant species and seedlings. Experience has shown that plants treated with liverwort are not only rejected by slugs. In addition, fungal infections such as mildew or gray mold are rarely reported on the plants.
Tip
If you plant garden herbs, sage should not be missing from the planting plan. The valuable spice and medicinal plant exudes an intense scent that has been proven to deter an approaching horde of snails. By combining sage with lettuce, bluebells, chrysanthemums and sedums, the Mediterranean herb becomes useful as a floral bodyguard against voracious slugs.