Spring has sprung and my garden has become a haven for snails. I’ve never experienced so many snails in my garden.
I don’t have pets or children to worry about but don’t want to harm native birds and wildlife.
What do you use to keep snails out of stop them from eating your plants?
The house next door was recently demolished - would this increase the number of snails?
Thanks in advance for your suggestions
There is no way to keep them away from your plants in the garden. You can kill them or watch them eat.
The simplest and cheapest way to get rid of them in large numbers is to wait for a damp night and go out with a torch and pick them up. You will get a bucket full if they are bad. Don’t put them down the toilet! A handful of salt in the bucket and a lid will do for them by morning: bury in a disused corner.
As the numbers thin out this process will get tedious. Then it is time for the snail bait. There are various kinds, some claim to be pet safe, what this means for animals and birds is hard to say in general. I would think the ones that contain metaldehyde would not be good for birds/animals that eat it. There are other active ingredients that are less harmful.
If you are game and not risk adverse, it may be possible to eat them…
Another option is to get some fowl which will love the snails to eat. Ducks for example will eat them, but one will need to check their local government requirements in relation to keeping fowl.
We have a ‘resident’ bluetongue lizard who seems to keep our garden snail-free.
Hopefully the neighbours are also happy with the Blue-tongue’s efforts. The Australian Museum has some tips on what they like and also what to avoid doing to encourage your guest/s. Snail baits ensure an unintended fate for any natural predators of the snails.
P.S.
If it’s a male if will likely go walk-about from now to Nov. If it’s not, the one in your yard may become two for a short while before becoming more. Keep an eye on the Kookaburras etc if this comes to pass. That’s an urban experience.
Bury a small container in the ground, eg an old tin with the lip about 20mm above ground level. Pour a little beer into it, this attracts the snails and they cannot get out. The beer needs replacing every few days.
They have been eating all my Dutch iris and daffodil flowers! I can’t bring myself to kill anything (I get up early on rainy days to rescue all the worms stranded on my driveway) so I gather them all in a container and take them for a walk to some undeveloped land a few blocks away and give them their freedom. 
If it’s the snails how does that help the situation?
I’m all for saving nature. Is it ever justifiable to save an invasive pest species and risk the demise of native species?
Thanks
I’ve been using this method in the mornings (it’s too cold of a night) and I’m picking up plenty - not a bucket full though. The salt worked a treat
A gardener cannot succeed by ahimsa or squeamishness. If you have such limitations you must accept many failures, give up gardening or pay somebody to carry the karmic load.
I don’t release them into native bushland, it is an undeveloped, residential house block.
Also I don’t want to kill all the snails in my garden because I have blue tongue’s which love them, and I won’t use baits. My large backyard is dedicated to the local bird, lizard and native bee population, I didn’t replace my elderly cat & dogs when they died a few years age for the same reason.
I doubt that my inability to kill snails is creating even a minor environmental problem.
‘Most snail species arrived accidently in Australia on potted plants, or stuck to packing cases, pallets and shipping containers. A few species seem to have been deliberately smuggled in to be bred and eaten as delicacies. Unlike other exotic species, there is no evidence to suggest that these ‘immigrant’ snails have affected the survival of Australia’s native snail fauna. In fact, most of these introduced snails invade places only after humans have destroyed the habitat of native snails.’
Sounds like a place of great pleasure.
Ours has something new to offer everyday, although quite a few hectares to keep an eye on.
One caution about being extra careful with what we do with the snails.
There are also native snails and slugs just to make it that little bit more difficult.
Snails will breed after there’s been a great deal of rain. When the weather dries up, their numbers decrease. I’m with you Lis. I don’t kill anything, nor do I spray, and I’m a very keen Gardner with a large yard. I find that the blue tongues take care of the snails, frogs eat mozzies, the ladybugs take care of aphids and the birds clean up grasshoppers. Snail bait is a terrible idea. It has a domino effect with creatures dying up the food chain. Not just native animals either. Dogs are often poisoned by snail bait. Unless you are the type of gardener who enters plants in shows or opens their garden to the public, I can’t see that a few munched leaves really matter all that much. If there is a particular plant being decimated, you can buy copper sticky tape to attach to the edge of the pot, or create some sort of rim around the plant, and attach the copper tape to that. Snails don’t like crossing the copper.
I tried this, but found that the next morning the beer was covered with hundreds, possibly thousands, of dead springtails (wee beasties that are an important part of soil fauna). I stopped using beer and went back to putting slugs in the bucket…
