Thursday, May 20, 2010

Horned

Turns out our beloved garden snail I photographed a while back brought his friends and family around to eat. We have two nice young plants that are fine, but four new sprouts of pumpkin plants are missing. As in no trace.

i
We can't bring ourselves to kill them, so we're going to try some natural repellents we read about online.
i

5 comments:

Mantan Calaveras said...

I think that, when we were kids, we deflected snails away from our pumpkin patch by circling it with wood chips. Anything with an unpleasant surface for them to crawl over.

Ghoul Friday said...

I have a few in my back garden. The birds seem to take care of the population (I'll sometimes walk out to a collection of empty shells). So far they haven't done serious damage to any of the plants.

But yes, if they are eating the pumpkin patch, measures must be taken.

Chris 'Frog Queen' Davis said...

Oh no!! Not the pumpkins!!

I agree with Mantan - I use the ash from our fireplace around my vegi beds, works wonders.

Cheers!

ShellHawk said...

Copper tape is your best friend.

Jason-v said...

Rot.. if you recall last year i sent pics of my pumpkin patch that i grow each year, it consists of a burn pile.. each year at halloween we have a party, along with a huge bonfire. Afterwards, all the pumpkins and guts and leftover seed go into the ashes after a day or 2. I then rake the ashes over the pumpkins as they break down over the next few months. Each year a massive pumpkin plant or 2 will emerge. I never feed or water them, the ashes feed them naturally.. and whatever its in the ash keeps snails away. If you have some ashes cover the plants base with it, it will help it grow and deter snails. Good luck...

mike