Due to the wet weather of the past week, I haven't been out in the garden much. The snails, however, have been very active; I can barely walk to the front gate without the familiar sound of snails crunching underfoot.
Due to the wet weather of the past week, I haven't been out in the garden much. The snails, however, have been very active; I can barely walk to the front gate without the familiar sound of snails crunching underfoot.
Most of the plants we grow are pretty resilient to attacks from snails, so we tolerate them, to a point. When it comes to them defoliating my newly planted courgettes, or shredding the irises, I admit we resort to the little blue pellets.
This extermination aside, I think snails can be very attractive creatures. Even the dreaded garden snail, Helix aspersa, can have beautiful markings on its mottled brown and beige shell. My girls used to spend hours collecting them into plastic tubs, sorting them into sizes and patterns, naming them, then racing them before letting them go behind the compost bin.
Snails can be educational too. Putting one on a pane of glass allows you to see the rippling muscles of the foot as the gastropod glides forward. Most people are perplexed to see that the ripples move forwards, towards the head end, rather than back, as the snail moves along.
I was recently shown a most peculiar snail from a garden in Aldershot. It had a very rare abnormality called a scalariform, from the Latin scalaria, meaning a flight of stairs. Instead of a tight whorl forming the usual globe shape, the helix is stretched out into a point.
I'm guessing that no matter how much I go on about snails, most people will regard them as a nuisance and a pest. But maybe this is because we haven't worked out a use for them in the garden. Perhaps this engraving of a snail dragging a cart (pictured, left) will enthuse someone to put snails to work, instead of just letting them devour plants in the herbaceous border. In case you can't read the small print, the caption reads: "Helix pomatia drawing a burthen of over nine pounds (four kilogrammes). (Reproduced, by permission, from L'Illustration, April 13, 1901)."
Gardeners' World Web User
01/01/2008 at 00:00
Well some interesting comments above, I have had huge problems with my potted herbs especially the tender leaves of my basil... which have now been consumed by an army of snails. I have put copper round the pots, but this has not stopped the little buggers and have now resorted to extermination... its either my tender young cabbages or the snails!
I'm going to try scraping a decent slice of topsoil of the the edges where they seem to congregate in the hope of destroying or certainly disarming the hidden problem of snail eggs. I'll let you all know if it helps.
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