Snails and Slugs

Tips, Tricks, and Answers

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Get Rid of Slugs and Snails
This tip includes a few easy ways to gather snails and remove them from your garden. You can give snails a nice place to hide during the day and then wash them away, or you can bait them with lettuce or cabbage leaves. You can also collect snails by enticing them into a jar with beer. Make sure not to kill any snakes or salamanders in your garden, since these creatures like to eat slugs and snails.

Hunt out Slugs and Snails at Night
Though they move slowly, slugs and snails can do serious damage to small gardens. You can poison them, but it is safer and easier to remove them by hand. Snails and slugs come out at night, so go out when it's dark to pick them by hand from your garden.

Keeping Slugs and Snails Away from Plants
You can create barriers around your plants that will keep out slugs and snails. Crushed eggshells create a rough surface that slugs and snails won't rub their bellies across. Chalk and salt will both harm slugs and snails, so making a line of either around your plants will keep the pests out. Make sure to know which plants will tolerate salt and chalk and which plants they will harm.