How do i stop snails/slugs eating my courgette plants?
Question:since its been raining for the last week the slugs/snails have demolished my courgette plants what chemical free way can i stop them
Answers:
handful the hottest chilli's you can get, a head of garlic
roughly chopped
a spoon or 2 of salt
into a big pot of water.boil until water has reduced by half
cool ..strain..
spray on plants
Beer trap for the slugs and a cigarette end trap for the snails.
sprinkle slug/snail pellets around the plants that are being eaten. Get them from most shops that sell gardening stuff.
pour some beer in a shallow container. The slugs will attract to it, die in it, and stay away from your plants.
Hi,
Try putting broken up egg shells round the plants.
In addition to the great answers above, sprinkling salt in the surrounding dirt will not only help control th pH of the soil, but also disable and slugs or snails heading to the plants.
Try burying yoghurt pots half filled with beer in the vegetable plot, cut the bottom off pop bottles and cut semicircles large enough for the slugs/snails to crawl through and place over the pots to keep the rain out. Alternatively you can buy the manufactured variety from any good garden centre.
Salt or Pelets but it kills them.
Put a wooden surround around your plant bed, made of planking and pin a strip of copper approx half inch wide all the way round. The slugs and snails wont cross the copper strip and you wont have to use chemicals or poison.
Ian
Use Ortho Slug-n-Snail killer. It's the only thing that really works.
Besides poison pellets, I can only advise you to plant your courgettes next year when they have grown a bitty bigger, then the slugs dont find them so attractive. Put the plants in a larger pot and keep them on the patio till they are stronger.
Broken egg shells work,sharp sand,but not to much.
go round early morning/dusk and pick up all you can see and put them in a jam jar. Put a black plastic bag on the soil nearby and weigh it down with stones/wooden planks/brick. After munching all night the slugs will hide under the black plastic, next day put em in the jar with the others. We do this regularly and the population eventually declines. Also grow more than you need and stagger the planting. There are now some organic pellets but not sure how effective they are. Please dont use the blue pellets as these can kill birds who eat the slugs/snails.
I don't like using chemicals either but the only way is to pick them up and find them a new home (don't forget they travel a distance and will probably return) on a daily basis or use slug pelletts, which are chemicals.
Please don't put salt on them as suggested - they have an awful death as it burns them till they die - the chemical pelletts have to be kinder than that!
More Related Questions & Answers...