There is probably not a person who, as a child, did not hold a snail in the palm of his hand, singing: “Show me your horns, I’ll give you grains and crumbs for that...”. Then it never occurred to anyone that this cute creature could cause significant damage to garden and berry crops. A large population of grape snails can almost completely destroy leaves in a vineyard or strawberry patch. Slugs (gastropods with a reduced shell) eat white cabbage, lettuce, cucumbers and many others garden plants.

Where do snails and slugs appear in garden beds?

These mollusks are common representatives of our fauna. They live in forests, meadows, gardens and vegetable gardens. IN favorable conditions When there is sufficient moisture and suitable vegetation species to feed on, snail and slug populations increase greatly. Mollusks are active throughout the warm season - from spring to autumn cold weather. Some species (in particular, the grape snail) can mate twice per season. With the onset of autumn cold weather, snails and slugs burrow into the ground and enter hibernation - suspended animation.

Active pests of agricultural crops include large and small grape snails and several species of slugs: Deroceras reticulatum, D. agreste, D. laeve, Parmacella iberia and Limax maximus. The last of the listed varieties settles not only in garden beds, but also in cellars and basements, where it spends the winter, feeding on supplies: potato tubers, carrots and beets.

Why are snails and slugs dangerous?

These mollusks pose the greatest danger to agricultural crops. They damage not only young shoots and leaves of plants, but also fruits. Thus, slugs gnaw potato tubers, strawberries, and cucumbers. The favorite food of land snails and slugs is cabbage and lettuce leaves. In conditions high humidity(during such periods, snails and slugs are especially active) they can eat plants almost to the ground. Crawling from bed to bed, mollusks spread viral and fungal diseases garden crops.

The arsenal for combating harmful shellfish includes: large selection means – chemical, mechanical and biological. When choosing a suitable method, you need to take into account the size of the plot, the area where crops are planted, and the specific climatic conditions.

Chemicals
Most slug and snail repellents found on garden store shelves contain metaldehyde. This substance damages cells digestive tract, which leads to the death of animals. The drug is especially effective against young individuals. It is recommended to use it in dry weather. When it rains, the effect of metaldehyde weakens. When using it, you should remember that it is toxic not only to shellfish, but also to humans and warm-blooded animals. If there are cats, dogs or small children on the property, then you should avoid using metaldehyde.

Safe chemicals include preparations containing iron phosphate. Granules of this substance are scattered on the beds between the rows. Upon contact with the drug, snails and slugs die from dehydration. This substance does not accumulate in soil and plants. It decomposes into safe components - iron and phosphorus compounds. A noticeable effect in the fight against slugs is provided by preparations containing copper compounds - Bordeaux mixture, copper sulfate and others.

Chemicals suitable for cultivating large areas occupied by monoculture. In summer cottages or small gardens, it is advisable to use biological preparations or traditional methods of control.

In nature, there are quite a lot of natural enemies of land snails and slugs. These are hedgehogs, toads, storks, rooks, thrushes, moles, shrews, lizards. Many of them can be easily attracted to your site. Hedgehogs should build shelters in which they can hide during the day and in winter time. A few piles of branches left over from tree trimming will provide an ideal hiding place for them. You can make bird feeders for the winter, then they will warm time years will appear on the site and eat garden pests. Toads lead a predominantly land-based lifestyle, but they need a body of water to reproduce. Small artificial pond, equipped on the site, will attract these useful amphibians.

Mechanical means
The simplest mechanical method is manual collection pests. It is best to go out “hunting” in the evening, before dusk, when slugs and snails begin to become active. Traps that use food attractants (substances that attract pests) will help increase the efficiency of collecting shellfish.

It has been noticed that slugs like the smell of beer, as well as fruit juices (in particular, apple). To prepare the trap you will need pieces of fabric. Burlap is best. The fabric is moistened with beer or juice and, before dusk, laid out on the beds, and pests are collected from it in the early morning.

In damp places you can lay out shelter traps where slugs will crawl for the day. These can be pieces of plywood, roofing felt, or even large dense plant leaves (for example, burdock). Traps are set in the evening, and slugs are collected from them during the day.

The lower part of the "foot" of slugs and snails is very delicate. Therefore, they are reluctant to move on heterogeneous prickly substrate. Creation of barrier strips from pine needles, crushed eggshells, brick chips, gravel will become an effective protection for the beds. Periodically, the backfill must be renewed so that passages do not form in it.

How to get rid of snails and slugs using folk remedies

Arsenal traditional methods combating harmful shellfish is very wide. This involves aromatic garden plants, whose smell repels snails and slugs, ash, tobacco dust and even food waste.

1. Helps fight shellfish pests proper organization beds. Planting cabbage, lettuce and other plants attractive to snails and slugs should be interspersed with aromatic herbs. These pests do not like the smell of sage, thyme, calendula, rosemary, and garlic. An insurmountable barrier for slugs will be nettle stems or horseradish leaves laid out around the perimeter of the beds. You can also mulch the soil in the garden bed with crushed wormwood, tansy, and mint.
2. Melon, squash or watermelon rinds are very effective as bait traps. Their smell attracts slugs and snails. In the evening, the peels are laid out between the rows of the beds, and in the early morning, pests are collected from them. Coffee grounds are considered an effective means of combating slugs. Experienced gardeners claim that coffee not only repels pests, but also has a toxic effect on them. Coffee grounds scattered between the rows will significantly reduce the number of slugs in the area.
3. Infusions of pungent plants with a pungent odor are considered no less effective. Plants sprayed with an aqueous solution of mustard, black or hot pepper powder become inedible for pests. An infusion of garlic cloves has a similar effect.
4. Garden crops can be pollinated with a mixture of finely ground slaked lime and tobacco dust. The smell of tobacco repels pests, and the lime component acts as a contact poison. When lime gets on the skin of a slug, it causes dehydration of the outer skin, which leads to the death of the pest. Pollinating beds with wood ash has a similar effect.
5. In small gardens, beer traps can be used to control slugs. Cut plastic bottles are buried next to the beds and filled with beer. Slugs, attracted by the smell of this drink, crawl towards the traps and drown in them. Gardeners also advise laying sheets of cardboard on the paths between the beds. Slugs crawl under them in the morning in search of shelter from the sun's rays; in the afternoon they are collected and destroyed.

Preventive measures

Preventing slugs from appearing on your property is much easier than fighting them later. Prevention starts with spring treatment beds. It is necessary to carefully remove all organic residues that remain after harvesting the previous harvest. Rotted plant stems and leaves are ideal food for young slugs.

High-quality weeding of beds throughout the season will also be a good preventive measure against mollusc pests. Weed beds provide an ideal refuge for slugs to escape the hot afternoon sun. When watering, you need to avoid overwetting the beds and stagnant water. To do this, you need to follow watering norms and loosen the soil more often between the rows.

When planting vegetable crops in the garden, the distance between plants should be strictly maintained. On thickened beds they are created ideal conditions for the life of slugs. Pests thrive in shady thickets, which provide them not only with food, but also with a secluded shelter during the daytime.

In areas with high level groundwater It is necessary to carry out reclamation measures that help drain the beds. Drains can be various designs– from open ditches dug in the lowest place in the garden to closed ones drainage systems, in the arrangement of which special pipes are used.

When choosing methods to control gastropods, you should remember that they are not only pests, but also part of the local ecosystem. Therefore, you should not destroy all slugs and snails on your site. In small country and home gardens, it is advisable to use control methods based on repelling mollusks. A few dozen snails or slugs will not cause much harm to the crop.

Video: how to fight slugs without chemicals

Seemingly harmless, loved by children, snails are actually one of the most dangerous enemies of your garden. Besides eating leaves cultivated plants- snails are intermediate “hosts” of nematode worms, which they spread throughout the entire dacha area. Therefore, the fight against snails cannot be postponed “for later”.

You can find out about the presence of snails in your area by the traces they leave behind: fecal residues, mucus and holes on the leaves. If you find something similar or notice the snails directly, then it’s time to start fighting:

1. Collect these shellfish by hand (remember to wash your hands thoroughly after this procedure). Most snails are likely to be found in cool, damp areas of the garden. You can soak cloths in fermented drink or fruit juice and place them directly on garden paths. Inspection of traps and collection of snails is carried out in the morning or evening.
2. Natural enemies of snails are jays, thrushes, starlings, frogs, and hedgehogs. Try to attract them to your site. For this you can arrange small pond or make a birdhouse. Hedgehogs can be attracted by dog ​​food. Both hedgehogs and toads should prepare reliable shelters for wintering.
3. Next to cultivated plants that are constantly attacked by snails, plant mustard, thyme, bay, rosemary, sage, parsley or garlic. Regularly spray vulnerable plants with tinctures of mustard, coffee, tobacco or hot pepper.
4. Often snails are found not in the beds, but in the compost heap. In this case, use coarse salt. Sprinkle it in the evening in dry weather, when many snails crawl out. Do not use this method in flower beds and garden beds.
5. Scatter crushed egg shells around the plants that need to be protected. This obstacle will become impregnable for the snails.
6. To combat snails, you can use superphosphate and lime. Apply these substances in strips along important ridges. Once on such a strip, the slug will not be able to move, since all the mucus is bottom surface his body will absorb the above-mentioned drugs.
7. Build small water obstacles - such as water troughs. You can dig a half around a specific plant (longitudinal section, letter “O”) old tire and periodically fill it with water.
8. If environmentally friendly methods do not bring the desired result, you can use proven chemicals. For these purposes, metaldehydes “Meta” and “Thunderstorm” are used. The drugs should be used with caution, as they pose a threat to humans and domestic animals.

Finally, I would like to remind you about prevention. Prevent the appearance of snails on your site. To do this, promptly remove the grass that has been mowed and pulled out during weeding, and remove from the area all stale stones and boards under which snails can find a safe refuge. Avoid constant dampness in the garden. Regularly mow and remove the grass, loosen the soil, simultaneously breaking up the surface crusts of the earth with cracks.

It will not be a big discovery to say that snails and slugs are one of the most common pests in our summer cottages. For these harmful creatures, nothing is sacred: they can nibble leaves (especially Chinese cabbage), feed on fruits on branches (strawberries, cucumbers) and fallen fruits (for example, apples). They can even penetrate into basements, where they are capable of destroying all our winter supplies of vegetables. It is very difficult to “fight” this problem, and yet there are a number of radical measures that will help to deal a blow to the hordes of vile pests on a large scale.

Slugs and snails: what they look like and how they cause harm

Slugs are gastropods that look like snails but lack a shell. They love damp places, so they live where it is damp and where there is no direct sunlight. Peak slug activity occurs during dark time days. Snails, on the other hand, can be active during the day because they have a protective shell.

In addition to the fact that these pests eat leaves, damage berries and fruits, they also spoil everything, polluting them with their droppings and mucus.

By the way!(especially Chinese cabbage) - most susceptible to attacks by slugs and snails. Although very often strawberries suffer, as well as lettuce and peppers. In general, they simply adore juicy vegetables, berries and fruits.

By the way! Slugs can attack your plants not only in open ground, but in a closed place. As a matter of fact, you can get rid of shellfish in a greenhouse using the same methods that will be widely presented below.

Folk remedies against slugs and snails

There are a sufficient number of effective and safe folk methods of controlling and exterminating slugs and snails in summer cottage. But to achieve best result, use all the products in combination, including alternating their use.

Advice! The most overgrown areas of the garden are most often attacked by these pests, because the humidity is higher there. Therefore, to prevent their abundant appearance, do not thicken the plantings, do not plant the plants too close.

Table salt

Many gardeners successfully use ordinary table salt against slugs by watering or filling the beds. But not all plants like this saline solution, although for some it is a good fertilizer, for example, for

Using it is a completely different matter. saline solution for baiting slugs in the basement or cellar. This solution should be prepared in the following proportion: 1 glass of salt per 10 liters of water. Just treat the basement with a sprayer.

Mustard (mustard powder)

One of the most popular and effective means to fight slugs is mustard powder, which should be sprinkled on plants that have been attacked by pests. You can also add additional hot pepper to the mustard powder.

Pay attention! The product will work until the first rain or watering.

Video: mustard against slugs

Wood ash

Wood ash is often used as a potassium fertilizer for plants, but it can also repel slugs. The ash will stick to their slimy bodies, and they will not be able to move.

And if you add it to the ashes baking soda, then the remedy will be even more effective. On 1 liter jar ash - 2 tbsp. spoons of soda.

You can add to the ash tobacco dust, for example, 1 to 1 or 2 to 1.

Or you can buy ready mixture tobacco and ash - “Tabazol”.

Important! However, there is one significant drawback: ash scattered over the garden bed with its impurities will only work in dry weather.

Eggshells and similar physical barriers

Slugs are difficult to overcome various kinds of barriers and obstacles (they have a very delicate body, and sharp edges simply do not allow them to crawl), which can be mounds of ground eggshells. Again, such shells are often used as a decomposing and gradually absorbing fertilizer.

Crushed shells and nut shells are also suitable. You can use pine or fir needles from a nearby forest.

Ammonia, vinegar and baking soda

Spraying helps protect plants from snails and slugs. ammonia, vinegar and baking soda. To prepare the solution, take 1 teaspoon of the product (it’s better to use 9% vinegar) and dissolve it in 1 liter of water. Spray the plants from above along the leaves and from below.

Important! Do not overspray with vinegar as it may harm your garden plants. No more than 1 time per week!

Coffee

If you do not want to use chemicals, then the cheapest instant coffee, the effect of which is similar to the strongest chemicals (but coffee, unlike them, is safe), will also suit you to fight snails and slugs. You can simply sprinkle the area around the plant, or brew strong coffee and pour the soil next to the plant and the plant itself over the leaf, of course, with a cooled drink.

Video: coffee is a super remedy for slugs and snails

Copper wire

For another very interesting way you will need to take slug repellent copper wire, from which you will need to remove the insulation and tie it around the plant. The slugs won't get through, and if they try, they'll get some kind of mild electric shock.

Sand

To repel and rid garden beds of slimy pests, you can use sand by mulching your plantings with it. You can also sprinkle coffee grounds or Epsom Salt (magnesium sulfate) on top of the sand.

Video: mulching beds with sand to prevent slugs and snails

Mineral fertilizers and fungicides

The use of fertilizers and fungicides against slugs is not only pest and disease control, but also fertilizing for the beds.

Superphosphate

Take a pack of superphosphate and spread its granules evenly throughout the garden. Of course, you shouldn’t expect a long-term effect, but slugs really don’t like it and are unlikely to appear in such a bed.

Copper sulfate

High efficiency in the fight against snails is shown by the use of copper sulfate along with sand.

Bordeaux mixture

In general, slugs do not tolerate copper or copper-containing preparations. Therefore, plant treatment Bordeaux mixture It will also help get rid of slugs.

Slug traps

You can not only scare away or destroy pests, but also catch them, and then do as you wish.

Beer trap.

If you didn't know before that slugs love beer, now you know.

Bury a cut bottle or some kind of container (glass) so that it is flush with the surface of the earth and fill it with draft unfiltered beer. The slugs will crawl to the alluring smell and simply drown... happy.

Video: how to catch snails and slugs in a beer trap

Fried meat

Another snail bait is fried meat, especially kebabs. For example, you can throw fried chicken skin into a dark place, and after 5-10 minutes the slugs will notice an appetizing smell.

Advice! Feeding slugs with beer and meat is an interesting idea, but perhaps you should still keep them for yourself and your holiday in the country.

Video: meat trap for slugs

Covering the earth

Just arrange it your way garden plot old wooden boards, slate or cardboard. At night, the slugs will crawl under them themselves, and in the morning you only need to collect and destroy them.

Natural enemies

Hedgehogs They love to eat slugs, so if such a forest pet has settled on your site, do not kick it out. Another natural enemy is ground beetle.

Video: how to protect plantings from slugs - traditional methods struggle

Chemicals against slugs and snails

The most popular chemicals for controlling slugs and snails are:

As a rule, all such remedies against slugs and snails have the same active substance- metaldehyde.

Remember! Use chemicals no later than 3-4 weeks before harvest.

In order for slugs and snails to permanently leave any gardener’s property, create conditions for them in which they would be unable to conduct their further life activities and would die. You have already become familiar with how to do this correctly and competently. So, the choice is now yours!

Video: how to deal with slugs

More than 150 species of cultivated plants. Most often they eat oblong holes in the leaves. On many fruit and vegetable crops stems, flowers and fruits are also damaged. When feeding and crawling from place to place, slugs leave whitish, quickly hardening mucus with a pearlescent sheen on the leaves. In addition, they are also carriers of helminths. To be fair, we note that mollusks also perform a sanitary function in the garden: they process plant remains. Therefore, in the fight against them it is important not to overdo it.

It is impossible to immediately and forever defeat mollusks. First of all, because the neighbors have them and will easily come to the “cleared” area. This means that it is important to learn how to control their numbers. How to do this?

Prevention

• Do not thicken the plantings. reduces soil shading, reduces and worsens the conditions for the development of slugs and.
• Don't litter the area. Bricks, boards, pieces of plywood or roofing felt lying on the ground are excellent shelters for mollusks.
• Regularly mow the grass around the perimeter of the site and along the edges of paths.
• Remove plant debris promptly.
• Drain the raw ones that slugs love so much.
• Carefully cultivate the soil, breaking up large clods - the favorite refuges of slugs.
• Plant santolina. Their smell also repels slugs.
• Plant vegetables on or.
• Use clear plastic covers (such as from) and film covers for young, vulnerable plants.
• Slugs are eaten by shrews, hedgehogs, and beautiful ground beetles. To attract hedgehogs, leave a shelter at the far end of the area in the form of a pile of brushwood and fallen leaves, necessary no brainer for wintering. Or build him a house - a box 30 × 25 × 25 cm, covered with dry leaves. To attract toads and frogs, you can dig. Birds will be attracted to the site and.

Fighting with improvised means

Garlic and mustard. 50 g of dry dissolve in 300 ml of water, let it brew for an hour, dilute another 3-4 times with water and spray the plants. Do the same with 100 g of grated, just let it sit for a day.
According to the observations of American scientists, 1- or 2% aqueous solution caffeine applied to soil or plant leaves repels and kills even large slugs and presumably destroys them nervous system. Coffee grounds can also be used as a repellent. Unfortunately, it can also affect. In addition, when sprayed with caffeine in concentrations above 2%, some types of plants become discolored.
In small areas, evening collection of shellfish with a flashlight is recommended. The collected slugs are thrown into a jar of kerosene, saline solution or a solution of any detergent. It is worth collecting slugs after rain.
If slugs penetrate into closets or cellars, where they take refuge during daylight hours, then the places where they are most often concentrated are watered with a solution table salt(at the rate of 200 g of salt per 10 liters of water). However, you should not sprinkle salt on the ground or spray it with a plant solution - the leaves may become discolored and even dry out.

Traps and bait

• For several days in a row, moistened rags, matting, pieces of plywood, tin, roofing felt, boards, leaves, etc. are laid out on the paths. It is advisable to moisten the soil under the shelter. During the day, shelters and the slugs gathered under them are collected and destroyed.
• To the side of the plantings, food baits can be laid out in small disposable plates: peels, peels. At dawn, the bait and the slugs feeding on it are collected.
• You can install small containers with beer or fruit juice. and the slugs crawl to the smell and... drown. The container should be deep enough and the entrance should be flush with the ground. The bait should not be filled to the brim; during rain, water should not get into it.

Creating barriers

• To protect your area from slugs from the neighboring one, slaked lime or mustard (30 g per 1 running meter) is poured on the border in 2-3 lines at a distance of 15 cm from one another. You can spray the soil aqueous suspension(100 g of powder per 10 liters of water) or a solution of potassium salt (1 kg per 10 liters of water at a consumption of 1 liter of solution per 1 sq.m.). Or pollinate (30 - 40 g per 1 sq.m.) with slaked lime (30 g). This treatment is carried out late in the evening, when the slugs crawl out of their shelters, 2 times with an interval of 20 - 30 minutes. Remember that these control agents will stop working after rain.
• Finely crushed, mixed with sand or lime, sprinkled on the ground in the evening or in damp weather. Or they cover the beds with a cloth onto which powder is poured. You can stretch ropes soaked in its solution around the flower beds.
• Barriers made of crushed river shells with sharp edges, crushed and walnut, fine gravel. They are scattered in strips along the perimeter of the site or around the ridges. However, in rainy weather their effectiveness is significantly reduced.
• The granular material Slug Stoppa Granules acts throughout the season: it absorbs moisture and mucus, dries out the surface of the bodies of mollusks, depriving them of the ability to move.
• Special plastic gutters are attached around the perimeter of the ridges. They fill with water, but slugs cannot swim. Wide plastic headbands with a bent edge are also sold. Anchored in the ground, they keep snails and slugs away from the plant.
• IN garden centers you can buy self-adhesive tapes, rims or copper-plated covering material ( trademark Shocka). Contact with copper gives the mollusks a slight electrical shock, so they do not cross such a barrier. Headbands with a small battery also appeared.
• Spraying plants with copper-containing products (CHOM, Oxychom, Copper Oxychloride, Copper Oxide, etc.), which are not washed off by rain for a long time. Such plants will become unattractive to slugs.

Biological method

Use of Molluscicides

Metaldehyde-based preparations ( Storm And Slug eater) it is recommended to apply it on the paths in the evening, in the form of granular baits directly on the ground or on pieces of glass, plywood, etc., placing them at a distance of 10 - 15 cm from each other. You can scatter granules over the surface of the soil between rows and. Apply no later than 20 days before harvest. The drugs act for more than 2 weeks without losing their properties even after rain. Consumption about 3 - 4 g/sq.m.

Remember that metaldehyde is only effective in very dry conditions. In the presence of moisture, slugs manage to restore fluid reserves lost under the influence of the drug.

Metaldehyde is toxic to humans if ingested. Do not allow pets into the treated area. Metaldehyde should be stored and used with all precautions in accordance with the instructions on the container labels. Vegetables and herbs from areas where metaldehyde has been used should be thoroughly washed.

Wet, rainy weather promotes the active development of mollusks, which are harmful to the garden. Netted slugs and snails began to reproduce with unprecedented energy. In many gardening gardeners, gardeners are alarmed: “These pests do not spare any plants. All the lettuce, all the strawberries were destroyed last season. Thousands of snails on every bush!” I wonder how gardeners fight back against these most harmful, shameless mollusks?

Safe snail control products

First of all, let me remind you about environmentally safe ways pest control.

You can shelter hedgehogs in your summer cottage. During the day, slugs hide from the sun, and at night they crawl out to steal. Hedgehogs also rest during the day. And at dusk they go hunting. Hedgehogs do not disdain shellfish.

The toad also deserves respect as a brave fighter of snails and slugs. Bring heels of toads from the meadow. Provide them with a shady shelter. For example, a cave made of stones among alpine slide, or place the pot with raw moss on its side and bury it halfway into the ground. During the day, the toads will hide there from the sun, and in the evening they will go to work. In the German gardening encyclopedia I saw a picture of a toad smiling towards a slug crawling along a leaf. Both toads and slugs are equally active at dusk, and if during the day, you are more likely to see them in rainy, cloudy weather.

Especially to combat slugs, the industry produces molluscoicides - poisonous granules. They are scattered on the beds. This substance attracts and kills snails and slugs. The slugs become like transparent worms and die. But chemicals still end up in the soil and are absorbed by plant roots.

Summer residents are more willing to use infusions of nettle and burdock. They chop this greenery and pour it warm water, leave in a dark place for three days. Strain and spray garden plants. It is curious that snails devour the nettle itself, but do not tolerate nettle infusions well.

Some gardeners go out hunting for slugs with a salt shaker. If they notice a slug or snail on a leaf, sprinkle a pinch of salt on it. The shellfish melts like lard in a frying pan.

Wood ash is also quite suitable for protecting the garden. They sifted it, poured it into a sieve, shook it over the rows of plants, and powdered it. The ash contains many microelements that will be useful as a top dressing for vegetables, flowers and berry crops, and the alkali contained in it is contraindicated for shellfish. In case of mild poisoning, shellfish secrete protective mucus and seem to “molt.” And if they come into contact with ash or superphosphate again, they will die.

And here's how in Soviet years Workers of the then famous vegetable growing company Leto dealt with harmful snails and crickets. Vegetable growers poured beer into bowls, and the elusive crickets gathered there to drink, got drunk and drowned. And recently in one foreign publication I came across the following picture: a jar is dug into the ground level with the edges of the garden bed. Above it is a conical plastic roof. Beer is poured into a can. It's a slug trap! Foreign slugs, like crickets, are also very susceptible to low-alcohol drinks. The beer needs to be changed after two days - the drowned ones should be thrown out into the compost.

There is evidence that snails and slugs cannot tolerate black coffee. Let's try to treat them with coffee grounds? Let's brew some stronger coffee, pour it into the sprayer - and go into battle!

Strawberry lovers have noticed that slugs and snails avoid contact with needles and sawdust coniferous plants- pine and spruce. And sprinkle the ground between the bushes with pine needles or sawdust. Perhaps the thorns irritate the delicate soles of the pests? But maybe the reason is different. In plants coniferous species contains volatile resinous substances. As an experiment, I suggest trying a water-turpentine emulsion. No one has ever conducted such experiments, but try what happens. A tablespoon of turpentine per liter of water plus 10 g laundry soap(for sticking) will, in my opinion, be enough. Apply 2-3 treatments to problem plants in the evening, at intervals of a day or two.

Among wild plants, there are occasionally those that are avoided by snails and slugs. For example, ferns. What if you prepare infusions from their leaves or rhizomes and treat the garden bed? Let us know what happens.

Fighting snails - advice from a professional

Gardeners need to know the biology of pests, E.V. Volodina, candidate of biological sciences, told me. - Let's remember once again that mollusks cause harm at night, and hide in the daytime. shady places, ; under lumps of soil. I lay out the fragments of slate, planks, burdock leaves with the “wrong side” up, and a day later I inspect them, collect them in a bucket and destroy them. To prevent slugs from entering the garden bed, I sprinkle ground superphosphate around the edge of the soil. The width of the strip is 10 centimeters.

If they crawl across the border, they are finished. Superphosphate is a valuable fertilizer and protection for plants. You don’t need to sprinkle a lot, just to powder the ground. After rain, the sprinkling must be resumed.

Hang in there, snails!

A year ago we exchanged our vegetable garden for a dacha in another area. We thought that we had been running the farm for so many years and were trained in everything, but no! We encountered a new pest that we had never thought about before. There were many in the new place garden snails. They devoured the strawberry harvest in one day, and did not allow the flowers to bloom - they ate the petals. I began to look for how to get them out. I collected a collection of tips, checked them: some more, some less, but they all work! I'm sharing it with you now.

Mow the grass more often. Snails love dampness and live in tall grass.

Get things in order. Boards, stones, pieces of plastic and metal are also a source of dampness and coolness, ideal for a snail.

Fill the passages between the beds with sawdust or fine gravel. It is difficult for a snail to crawl through dry, loose soil.

Make a trap: take a plastic bottle cut to a height of 15 cm and dig it into the ground to the very edges. Fill to the top with beer, kvass or syrup. Cover the top loosely with a bag or something else that will protect the trap from the rain like an umbrella. Ready! The snails will crawl to the smell of beer and drown.

Spray the plants with garlic infusion (grate 100 g of garlic, pour 1 cup of boiling water, leave for 24 hours. This is a concentrate: it must be diluted with water 1:20 before spraying).

Collect snails with your hands and put them in a jar with gasoline or salt. It's unpleasant and inhumane, but it works.

B.C. KULICHKINA, Vyborg

And on our plot of 12 acres, which is located on the Karelian Isthmus, where there is plenty of moisture, snails and slugs were just a disaster until this year. And we collected them, especially after the rains, in large quantities on the beds, bushes, and fences. And so I read that guinea fowl cope well with this problem. They need to be acclimated by feeding snails and slugs into their diet, but they do not rake the ground like chickens, and they do not destroy other pests - those in the ground, in leaves, under bushes and trees.

This was a challenge for me. While the earth was freeing itself from winter hibernation and preparing to once again release pests into the wild, I started construction small house for a bird, which, in my opinion, was supposed to help cope with snails and slugs. And three charming chickens settled in our so-called chicken coop with a small aviary.

Of course, I didn’t expect much help from the four-month-old little girls. When snails crawled up and slugs appeared, after the next collection I treated the feathered farm several times, which at first with wariness, and after the third treat, accepted them as a delicacy. Despite my wife’s certain concerns that they would eat her seedlings and berries instead of slugs and snails, I released them within the fenced area. The fears turned out to be unfounded.

But the snails and slugs, which made my eyes dazzle, miraculously began to disappear, and with them the caterpillars and ants.

But the strawberries, which were inaccessible to our “nurses” because they were fenced, were attacked by ants, which began to eat ripe berries. My wife had to make a request to visit these beds as well.

To our surprise, the reprisal against the ants took place in the most amazing way. At the same time, the chickens were not interested in the berries.

Some may find this a troublesome task - keeping even three chickens, as they require care and attention. Despite their omnivorous nature, they need food and mineral supplements, but it's worth it. After all, they have also become laying hens and every day they bring, if not three, then two fresh eggs. And the replenishment compost pit chicken droppings are also a plus.

I do not deny other methods of fighting snails and slugs, but for me this is the most effective, environmentally friendly and triple useful.

Vasily Vasilievich Logvinenko

Although snails are not fast...

About ten years ago, living in the north, we did not know and had never heard of garden snails. When they appeared, it was rumored that they had brought this mollusk with containers from the Baltic states. Be that as it may, in Karelia snails multiplied almost instantly and in large numbers. Apparently, this is facilitated by cool and humid summers. And now obtaining clean garden produce that is not soiled by snails or eaten by them has become a problem.

Eats everything

Snails are found everywhere - in vegetable gardens, fields and forests. Already in distant forest clearings, where we usually collect medicinal plants, these mollusks have multiplied, they probably “come” there in the cars of berry pickers and mushroom pickers, and in timber trucks.

The snail is so omnivorous that Colorado beetle Compared to her, it seems like a harmless creature. Although it does harm, it does so selectively; chemicals can be used against it. And this seemingly slow creature eats everything, even nettles, horseradish and all other bitter and pungent plants. It eats berries and fruits right on the trees, and apples, for example, can be spoiled at a height of 4-5 m! What to do, how to fight this creature?

I control pests in several ways.

Manual collection

First of all, you need to get rid of the weeds, especially the weeds under the bushes. We try to keep the area clean. Even under fruit trees Nothing grows here, because the grass is a real paradise for snails. They love wet weather because it is difficult for them to crawl “dry” on stems and leaves. But after the rains and dew, they crawl out in dozens, climbing onto the bushes.

This best time to “hunt” these pests. I take a household bucket and dissolve 2 tbsp in 1 liter of water. l. table salt, put on gloves and - one by one - dump the snails into the brine. They immediately hide in their shells and then become salty. After half an hour, not a single snail moves.

Scheduled fee

IN hot weather snails like to hide under objects lying on the ground - leaves, piles of grass, building materials. I help them with this. I lay out pieces of corrugated slate, boards 30-40 cm long, and other wooden parts every meter along the entire perimeter of the site.

In the hot afternoon, I take the same bucket of brine, a small short broom and collect shellfish on a “planned” basis. I lift the board to which the snails are stuck, and with one movement of the broom I throw them into the bucket. In one round, there are over a hundred pests in the bucket! I do this 2-3 times every 8 weeks.

But there is one trick: you can’t let the board lie tightly on the ground - snails simply won’t crawl under it. Therefore, I do this: I nail a round piece of wood with a diameter of 2-3 cm or a block of the same cross-section to one end.

Framing beds

We have a bed of horseradish in the shade of the barn, which is indispensable when canning vegetables. It is located exactly in the place where the best conditions for snail breeding are best conditions. Until the 2014 season, we were unable to keep the horseradish leaves ungnawed. The snails attacked literally in hordes!

But I managed to solve this problem. I made the frame for this bed from used galvanized sheet iron. From it I cut strips 24-25 cm wide. One edge, moving 4-5 cm from the edge, was bent at an angle of 45-50 degrees. I also took dry spruce stakes and whittled them sharply top part, soaked in working off motor oil and stuck them in, taking into account the length of the steel strips around the perimeter of the bed (Fig. 1, position 1). Then I trimmed the sides of the bed vertically and installed the metal strips behind the stakes as shown. Each sheet overlaps the next one in length.

When coming up with this design, I used my observations of snails. When a clam crawls onto vertical surface(and this happens very often), and there is an obstacle in the form of a block on it, then he cannot advance further. He also cannot turn around and slide down. So the snail ends up in a trap where it dries up.

I thought that the snails would crawl onto the iron sheets, but they would not be able to rise further, since the sharp angle of the edge
iron will not allow them to climb up. And so it happened. After about a week, I'll see if there are snails under the edge of the iron? There turned out to be quite a lot of them.

So the horseradish bed was reliably protected. Nobody gnawed the leaves anymore. Therefore, I decided that next season I would also equip the strawberry beds.

For those who do not have enough iron sheet, you can make a frame using another option, shown in Fig. 2. We frame it with boards (if they are narrow, you can knock two pieces together) or slate. They are also supported by stakes driven in from the outside. To prevent snails from crawling over the boards, we nail or screw strips of iron or aluminum 4-5 cm wide onto their edges before installing them, just like in the first case, at an angle.

Gardening on horns or watching snails

The nightmare of any summer resident is the death of his favorite plantings. And, unfortunately, this “horror movie” can now often be seen with your own eyes in your own garden. The role of the main and ruthless villain is an ordinary snail. However, considering how much harm it causes and how much effort it takes to fight it, it is appropriate to call it extraordinary.

Where do children come from?

“Snail, snail, stick out your horns...” - that’s what my friends and I sang in our distant childhood when we found this creature. They admired him, were touched, and rejoiced. And then I didn’t think at all that this “honey” and “cutie” was not at all as harmless as we thought. I've read so many different tips on how to deal with snails and their slug friends over the past two years! I tried to use many of them and, regardless of their effectiveness, I came to the conclusion that fight is fight, but prevention is more important. What should we understand by it? And the fact that you shouldn’t allow snails to reproduce.

Therefore, from early spring to the end of summer, I have recently made it an ironclad rule not to be lazy, to go around my garden in the mornings and evenings (and in rainy weather, during the day) and collect the “harvest” of these slimy creatures. Of course, this is a dirty business (as friends laugh - not for the faint of heart), but where to go? If I don’t give them, then they take me. Or rather, my plantings (which, in general, are part of me).

I don’t just pass by flower beds where plants that are especially tasty for snails grow, but I also set traps. After all, as you know, they like to hide during the day in dark places. Therefore, I lay out small strips of slate along the beds, and early in the morning I turn them over and shake off the “tenants” stuck to their undersides into a bucket.

Last summer was warm and humid, with rain falling almost every day. And that’s when I first realized how many pests live in my area. I also realized that this is not the limit of their ability to reproduce.

Do we, summer residents, often think about this? And it would be necessary, because fighting the consequences, and not the cause, is running in a circle.

If so, let's think about it. Nature begins to wake up in the spring, and snails crawl out of their shelters to feast on tender young leaves. And while the vegetables in the garden have not grown, they gobble up primroses for their dear soul. I noticed that they have a favorite flower - colchicum. You can often see that its young foliage is all eaten away. This flower is also convenient for snails and slugs because you can easily hide from the sun in its rosettes. And in the fall, pests love to cluster around rudbeckias, which are popularly called golden balls. Therefore, when inspecting my property, I first of all pay attention to these plants.

It's never too late

Who said snails crawl slowly? Of course, everything is learned by comparison, but I can say with all responsibility that during a short summer night they can easily cover a distance of at least 3 m. This is probably not the limit of their capabilities; I haven’t measured it specifically. But judging by the “schedule” of the destruction of my plantings, I’m not too mistaken.

“So, excuse me,” an attentive reader may notice to me, “what then should we do with the collected snails and slugs?” ABOUT! This is worth talking about separately. I do not go on my daily rounds with empty handed– I carry a bucket of water in which I dissolve a little washing powder or dishwashing detergent. For what? And then, the chemicals they contain have a detrimental effect on pests, almost instantly corroding their mucous membrane. If you just throw them at clean water they will only say thank you for this: they will swim a little, and they will crawl out onto land without any problems.

But! If you make it so that swimming can be prolonged, this can also become a means of fighting snails, and in the literal sense of the word, and even environmentally friendly. These horned creatures are not essentially waterfowl creatures; staying in the water for too long is also destructive for them. This is what I sometimes do: if during my rounds I don’t have a container with a chemical solution with me (or I’m too lazy to carry it with me), then I throw the snails collected in the palm of my hand right into the middle of my decorative pond. And they find themselves in a hopeless situation. They cannot swim (there are no fins or tails), which means they will not reach the shore. And even if they crawl out onto the leaves of the aquatic plants growing there, they still don’t have long to live. Firstly, these plants are inedible for them, and secondly, frogs do not sleep either, and besides, they always want to eat. My five-year-old granddaughter often helps me fight snails. And it’s funny for me to watch how happy she is, sending the snails on a “long voyage.” This is her game.

I have seen advice in a magazine more than once that spruce spruce branches should be laid out in garden beds to prevent snails. I don’t know, maybe somewhere there are such “vigorous” spruce trees, but my pests live very calmly right on them and feed on young needles, not at all embarrassed by the fact that they can prick themselves. To my horror, I noticed that they have now taken the habit of hiding in my favorite spherical thujas, as well as thickets of low-growing autumn asters. I don’t know how to get them out of there yet.

But spoil them good life V compost heaps(which for them is akin to a restaurant: it’s warm and there’s plenty of food) I’ve already learned. It’s simple: I lay out the same strips of slate on top of the organic matter, as well as pieces polyethylene film. You just have to remember to look at these hunting spots every day and destroy hidden pests. So sometimes we ourselves create them comfortable conditions and we produce them without hesitation. Therefore, the fight must begin at the beginning summer season and continue until closing. And it's never too late to do this.

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