The voracious slugs quickly strip entire rows of lettuce (and freshly planted young plants) completely bare, causing great damage. Although a snail infestation is less likely in raised beds than on beds close to the ground, it is also not impossible - the animals have no problem crawling up the vertical walls and thus getting the fresh green food they are hoping for.
How do you protect a raised bed from snails?
To protect a raised bed against snails, you should choose a conical shape when building it, place angular obstacles and sharp-edged wood chips all around, tension copper straps and install a snail barrier made of angled sheet metal. Overhanging shoots should be shortened or tied upwards.
Plan snail protection when building the raised bed
For this reason, you should keep the climbing artists away by building a snail-unfriendly raised bed. When designing, make sure that the bed box becomes larger towards the top - i.e. has a conical shape. This makes it very difficult for the animals to get up. You can achieve this shape not only with wooden beds, but also with stone or plastic beds. In addition to the conical shape, life is also made difficult for snails by bed walls made of overlapping wooden boards (or plastic panels), because the pests cannot overcome these angular obstacles or can only overcome them with a lot of luck. Also mulch the soil around the raised bed with sharp-edged wood chips - these are also avoided.
No chance for snails in raised beds
Otherwise, make your raised bed safe from the voracious mollusks with copper straps stretched around the bed and/or a classic snail barrier. An angled sheet of metal that protrudes from under the overhanging edge of the bed is sufficient as a snail barrier. Since it can also happen that there are snail eggs on purchased young plants or in the potting soil or compost, you should have an environmentally friendly snail pellet (€68.00 on Amazon) based on iron III ready just in case. A single treatment of the plants in spring is usually enough to ensure peace and quiet from annoying snails for the rest of the gardening season.
Be careful with overhanging shoots and tendrils
Caution is advised with all overhanging plants in raised beds: tendrils of nasturtiums, cucumbers, zucchini, etc.on the ground, even the best snail defense is useless. In this case, the animals simply use the plants' extra-long shoots to get to the raised bed. So keep such overly long shoots short, tie them upwards and/or let the plants grow on a climbing aid.
Tip
Mulching with straw or similar materials not only keeps the soil in the raised bed moist longer, but also keeps annoying snails away - they don't like the sharp edges and cannot overcome them.
