Wednesday, 29 May 2013

There will be war

on these little blighters!  Helix aspersa.

(image from commons.wikipedia.org)

Having lovingly pricked out 120 lettuce plants over the weekend, Monday, I think, I was devastated and livid this morning to find that 4 snails had munched their way through about half of the lettuces overnight.  There was not a snail in sight when I shut up the greenhouse last night, and the lettuces were intact.  Not now.  And the chickens enjoyed their extra tasty breakfast, too.

So, luckily there are a few lettuce seedlings left which I can use to fill the spaces, and I have moved the trays back to the verandah in my mini-greenhouse.  The big greenhouse has had slug pellets strewn around where my cucumber, tomato and pepper plants are - I know that the snails are partial to cucumber as well.  I don't like killing things like this, but I am not growing food for snails, unfortunately; if only they could restrict themselves to their fair share, we wouldn't have this problem - they seem to think they can eat the lot...

3 comments:

Wannabe Sybil said...

Have you tried beer in a saucer sunk in the soil? Any other ideas please share! The weather has been too kind to slugs. WS xxx

Angela said...

Perhaps you could post them to Mags at Fraise Lachrymose- her boys are collecting them for school!

Morgan said...

@WS - I think that I would resent having to buy the beer to catch the slugs!
@Angela - that would be a slimy parcel for a postman to deal with if it burst open!!