Snails - the French have the right idea

I hate snails with a passion beyond compare.   After moving in somewhere and spending a lot on plants and looking forward to having a garden, they ate just about everything.    I then went in the huff with the garden, don't ask, for a few years.   I have bounced back though and I am on a mission to grow plants that snails wont eat,.    Plants I have grown that haven't been eaten by them are euphorbia, fuscia's, lavender, roses, granny's bonnet, geraniums, jasmine, some grasses, azalias, heathers (don't even like them but any port in a storm) and peonies.   I will add to this as more of my plants survive.   If anyone had any definate plants that they won't eat please let me know

Digitalis (foxgloves), aconitum (monks' hood) are poisonous so left alone by slugs and snails.  They don't like hairy or highly scented foliage or anything oin the rosacae family which includes more than just roses.

Howevre, a goo dtip is to scatter wildlife friendly slug pellets (not metaldehyde based) around your garden on St Valentine's Day or the Ides of March or some other date that's easy to remember in early spring and repeat every 2 weeks till June.  This way you'll get them as they emerge from hibernation, as they hatch and before they get the chance to scoff your treasures and breed again.

What about a 'sacrificial' plant, like berginia, I think that's how one spells it. The snails & fellow molluscs really delight in it, and by the time they've sated themselves, with a saucer of old beer to wash it down, they're ready for Valhalla, a monstrous headache, and perhaps a badger will come along to snaffle them down as part of a healthy diet !  Cheers !

I have to say something definitely munch a load of foxgloves this year. If its not snails then what was it? 

I dont think they like furry leaves, so sage and lichinis seem to get off ok.

Beaded Irises I think the leaves are too tough but they do love hiding in among them , so they wont eat them but they my well breed in them 

CORRECTION !  Not Berginia as I mentioned in a previous slot, but HOSTA !!!

BUT, berginia DOESN'T  get ravaged by slugs or snails, so there is a plant that is mollusc resistant. So, there we are........ Hosta for sacrifice, Berginia for resistance.  

Onwards and downwards !

I think your right,there are plants they wont touch but if you need a deterrent a garlic spray and grow garlic in between plants plus a the pellets but yes snails are annoying vegetarians thats what makes hard when I am a vegetarian too!

Snails and slugs get such bad press.  Do not forget it is not just snals/slugs that eat our plants. I go out at night and see various creatures munching on my plants.  Caterpillars are little devils but i wouldn't harm them.  I put the odd cabbage out buried a little in the soil and place the caterpillars on them and they continue to munch away.  I will never use any sort of pellets to kill snails/slugs - I don't believe there is any such product as 'wildlife friendly' pellets as I care too much for our wildlife.  I put out decoy plants in front of and in between my plants, mainly marigolds, which they love and do leave the other plants alone.  You can also physically remove some of them from your garden to an appropiate location (perhaps a nature reserve). Remember they can also be our little hoovers in the garden and eat old stuff on the ground and not always climb up plants (especially the little black ones). This is in my experience.

We seem to have a lot of slugs more than snails.   I can go out to the garden on a damp night and finds slugs making their way up my house walls and even the windows!!     But I have also seen field mice nibble at the stems of young plants, so they're not  popular either........but this year I haven't bothered to put anything down, I've given up lol!   The funny thing is, they never eat my weeds.....

Hi, I seem to be constantly on the look-out for the pests at the moment.  I've found so many in the greenhouse that it's become a night time vigil. I was really surprised to find some tiny slugs on the leaves of my squash and courgettes because the leaves are furry and spiky. I've just heard on Gardeners Question Time that slugs seem to like the green slime or was it algae, that I've got loads of on the greenhouse glass. Must do better with the cleaning next time! One thing that I've  noticed for the first time is a slug that looks mottled, it looks like a two-tone green colour, a bit like a leopard-skin print, perhaps it's the latest fashion!

Actually, I quite enjoy looking at the shells on snails, some of them are really beautiful colours

I've just been out to check on the greenhouse, nothing there. Homeloving, you're quite right they are quite beautiful, but they're still a pest. Raspberry, have you tried pansies, they don't seem to like the ones I've got, or night-scented stock, or perhaps it's just getting a bit chilly for them!

I felt the same as you for years raspberry but after reading Germaine Greer's article on snails I agree with blackcap.

I now feel that my garden is so "wildlife friendly" that most attempts to grow, say vegetables, for myself fail.  Too much low maintenance planting adds to my problem. I felt defeated one evening this summer when I started counting the slugs and snails cleaning up under the bird feeder - stopped at 80.  That's a big portion!

I know, I don't like to harm them either which is why I am going down the route of plants that they don't like to dine on,   It is just that it can be soul destroying put all the time, money and effort into your garden for it to then be ruined.    I am vegeterain too and don't like to harrm any animals, however snails are tempting me to do otherwise, but I don't want to harm any other wildlife.   I don't find them beautiful at all I think they are totally disgusting, ugh.   Thanks for all your commens it is obviously something that is a big problemo for people

My husband goes round the gerden in the evening and collects all the snails and puts them in the compost bin after they have been in there a while he puts them into an old fish tank and feeds them on herbs etc and then he cooks and eats them. Needless to say he eats alone, yuk.I tend to throw them over the fence to the chickens. They seem tobe doing ok.

Our next-door neighbour has an old bath in his back garden that frogs breed in (I think he has a pile of boulders in one end so the frogs can get out.  I often get tiny froglets in my garden, and occaisonally the big ones will come in (I think there's one living in the leaf litter of the rowan at the bottom of the garden).  They do an excellent job of clearing up the slugs, and something is eating the snails and leaving the shells intact (don't think this will be a frog?), I often find an empty shell under the bird feeder (the shell is entire, so it's not a song thrush).

I quite like the frogs, although one did make me jump when I was clearing some leaves off the patio, it leapt from a pile of leaves, right on to my wellies, then off again.  I didn't have time to scream, but it took ages for my heart rate to go down again!

Hi Raspberry - I'm another snail hating vegetarian so I can't eat them  I have the same approach as you and now only grow plants slugs don't seem to like. I have heucheras, alchemilla, astillbe and lots of succulents too such as sempervivum and sedums. These have all survived untouched for several years now so I've been taking plenty of cuttings and hope the slugs/snails will go elsewhere!

Native wild flowers don't seem bothered by them, campion, sidalcea, scabious, centuramontana etc. Dicentra, russian sage, primrose, nepeta, penstemon, poppies and anemones. Candytuft, alyssum, philadelphus and cornflower have all done really well for me but next year I am going down the route of nematodes because I do want delphiniums badly.

Muvs, why don't you try growing your delphinums in a pot with copper tape around the top?  I normally do this with plants that slugs like, until they're too big to be eaten by the slimy blighters, and then I plant them out with a good handful of gravel around them.  The slugs are going hungry in my garden (the ones that the frogs don't get, anyway).

I am going to lift them and pot them up - only bought them this year. Where do you buy copper tape? Online? Oh and do you use a plastic pot or does it need to be terracotta? This is the first year I've really had problems with slugs as I live in quite a dry area - Torquay - but we have cleared all the huge shrubs out and cut some trees down - they were swamping my small garden and I've had to leave 3 large sycamores and I have evergreen oaks at the side of the house. I took away the cover for the birds and I did have a hedgehog but haven't seen it this year so I'm assuming that + plus the wetter weather = slugfest2012!

You can get copper tape at most garden centres, but I buy most of mine on line.  It normally costs around £5 for a decent amount.  I've used it on both plastic and teracotta pots, but the pots do have to be clean & dry for the tape to work properly.  I sometimes put two bands of tape around the top of pots, about an inch apart, as some of the slugs are big enough to 'bridge' the tape without touching it.  If you have a plant that slugs particularly like (such as strawberries), I double-tape the pots, and stand them on gravel on my patio, this seems to have worked this year.  Almost October, and my plants are covered in fruits of different sizes, no matter how many flowers I pick off, I still miss the odd one or two which are still growing!