Snails are one of the animals that many people find disgusting. They are slimy and what's more, they eat entire flowerbeds in the garden. If they also appear in the flower pots on the terrace, countermeasures are essential.
How to prevent and control snails in flower pots?
Snails in flowerpots can be attracted by purchased potting soil, hidden snails in plants or the scent of their favorite flowers. Prevention and control include collection, snail barriers such as copper tape, protective coatings and encouraging predators such as hedgehogs and blackbirds in the garden.
How do the snails get into the flower pot?
In most cases, the snails or their eggs are already in the potting soil you bought.
If you buy your flowers in large garden centers, snails can also be hidden in the plants. In the warm greenhouses, snails find optimal conditions to develop. Snails are also attracted by the scent of their favorite flowers from the neighborhood.
Snails’ favorite foods
If you want to keep snails away from your flower pots, you should avoid these flowers:
- Dahlias
- Tagetes
- Sunflowers
- Columbine
- woman's coat
- Marigold
- Lupine
This is just a small selection of preferred foods. In years with exceptionally high snail populations, almost nothing is safe from them. Only targeted combat can help.
Fighting snails
The most common means of combating snails is slug pellets. However, it is not only toxic to snails but can also be dangerous to pets. To be on the safe side, you should avoid using chemicals and try home remedies.
- The easiest method is to collect the snails at dusk.
- Provide opportunities for animals to hide. It is damp and cool under an upturned flower pot. Here you always catch several animals at the same time when collecting.
- Snails love beer. However, not only they drown in beer traps, but also other useful animals. Please avoid beer traps!
- Build snail barriers, for example from copper tape.
- Protective coatings against snails; The flower pots are coated with the biological agent “Schnexagon”. The composition of the product prevents the snails from climbing up.
Prevention against snails
If you buy new flowers or new potting soil, you should carefully examine whether there are snails or their eggs in the soil. Potting soil can be sterilized by heating it in the oven. At temperatures around 100 degrees, most pests die off. It also makes sense to leave the snails' natural predators in the garden. Adult snails are eaten by hedgehogs, mice, toads, blackbirds and magpies. The eggs are on the menu of various beetles and centipedes.
