trick with kink
Snail fence: How to effectively protect fruit and vegetables from molluscs
Snail collars are particularly suitable for protecting lettuce and young pumpkin, cucumber or zucchini plants from snails.
Snails have a bad reputation. Especially among allotment gardeners. Because they love the painstakingly tended fruit and vegetables. But how do you get rid of the mollusks?
In the ranking of the most popular animals among hobby gardeners, snails tend to be at the bottom. With all sorts of home remedies, many try to keep the mollusks away from their fruit and vegetable beds. Because that’s where the slimy crawlers like to feast. Kohlrabi, pumpkin, lettuce, strawberries, zucchini – hardly anything is safe from them. The “household remedies” with which snail-plagued allotment gardeners help themselves are imaginative, but for slugs, slugs, field slugs and related species they are mostly the death sentence. The beer trap is particularly popular. Attracted by the smell of the barley juice, the snails fall into a jar that has been sunk into the ground and filled with beer and can no longer free themselves. Unfortunately, this tempting offer also catches protected species such as the Roman snail. Chemical clubs like that slug pellets also breathe the light of life out of the penetrating mollusks. However, animals that do not cause any damage in the garden are also affected here.
Even if it is sometimes difficult: try to let the snails live! There are methods to keep the hungry molluscs away from the beds without killing them. A snail fence prevents them from getting to the crisp green leaves of kohlrabi & co. You can either build it yourself or buy it from a specialist dealer. In this article you will find out which variants are available and how to set up a snail fence.
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The trick with the kink
Basically, you only have to know one thing in order to “learn the trade” with snails of all kinds. Snails cannot crawl overhead at 90 degrees. With a snail fence, the animals are forced to do exactly this feat. And they reliably fail if the snail fence is installed correctly. The bed edgings are made of galvanized sheet steel or plastic. The principle is the same for both variants. With these three models you keep snails away from the young vegetables in your beds.
1. Swissino snail fence
The snail fence “Made in Switzerland” comes as a small construction kit. The set consists of a total of 24 plastic parts of different lengths, which can be flexibly put together to form a snail barrier according to the size of the bed without additional tools. With the ground anchors integrated in the side walls, the Swissino snail fence fixed in the ground. In addition, it can be expanded at will. A snail tong is included as an extra.
2. innoguard snail fence
Instead of plastic, the innogard snail fence galvanized sheet steel installed. Here, too, no technical expertise is required for assembly. The set consists of four side walls (each one meter long) and four corner connectors and can be put together in minutes. Help with larger beds and areas single sheetsto adjust the side lengths.
3. Noeyzim snail collar
Crunchy lettuce is one of the favorite foods of the voracious molluscs. The Spanish slug, in particular, heads for lettuce beds in a targeted manner. If you want to protect your heads of lettuce separately from snails, you can use a so-called snail collar envisage. This one has a diameter of almost 25 centimeters and is placed over the salad like a ring. The collar, which is angled downwards, is an insurmountable obstacle for most snails.
Frightening snails: This can also work
Not for everyone, but extremely effective, are two options recommended by biologists for fighting snails. The goal: the snails should die, but not suffer. This happens, for example, when using slug pellets or the aforementioned beer trap.
If possible, collect the snails in a large bucket at dusk and then pour boiling water over the animals. For the second variant you need garden shears or hedge shears. The rest is self explanatory.
How do you properly dispose of dead snails?
There are also two options for professionally disposing of snail carcasses: compost or toilet. Advantage of compost: snails are cannibals. The living are drawn to the scent of their dead kin and gather there. By the way, it is not a good idea to collect the snails and release them alive in a nearby place. If you want to be left alone, release the army of snails at the edge of the forest a little further away.
Sources: my beautiful garden
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