I have two mulit-variety fruit trees and have been picking snails off of the
trunk and lower branches, but I was wondering if they are harmful to the trees?

Snails can be harmful to young trees eating through tender bark or to trees with low-growing leaves. Most often the latter are citrus where they cause the most damage.

We have had snail infestations on citrus trees which required some serious hand-picking on an almost daily basis. However, the tree still produced quite well.

If these are young fruit trees and not yet well established, you are well advised to continue picking the snails off. If the tree is older and larger, it's not as big an issue. We currently have a very mature large apple tree which often has slugs and snails on the lower trunk, but these do not seem to cause a problem to the tree.

rhubarb wrote:
....
Snails can be harmful to young trees eating through tender bark or to
trees with low-growing leaves. Most often the latter are citrus where
they cause the most damage.

surrounding the tree with a layer of something they
don't like to crawl across can help. some people use
strips of copper. we've not needed anything like that
here even for slugs.


We have had snail infestations on citrus trees which required some
serious hand-picking on an almost daily basis. However, the tree still
produced quite well.

If these are young fruit trees and not yet well established, you are
well advised to continue picking the snails off. If the tree is older
and larger, it's not as big an issue. We currently have a very mature
large apple tree which often has slugs and snails on the lower trunk,
but these do not seem to cause a problem to the tree.

some species are quite good with garlic butter...

not many above ground snails here for long. the
birds get them.


songbird

Snails usually feed on the lower part of plants, eating partly or completely through the leaf. To get rid from snails or slugs add coffee grounds along with crushed egg shells which will deter snails. Place used coffee grounds (the stronger the better) and broken egg shells in a circular perimeter around the plants you are trying to protect. Use sand. distribute playground sand around young plants early in the Spring. Be generous with the sand. Snails hate sand because it rips their bellies open and they die.

In article ,
rhubarb wrote:

Malcom \Mal\ Reynolds;956450 Wrote:
I have two mulit-variety fruit trees and have been picking snails off of
the
trunk and lower branches, but I was wondering if they are harmful to the
trees?

Snails can be harmful to young trees eating through tender bark or to
trees with low-growing leaves. Most often the latter are citrus where
they cause the most damage.

We have had snail infestations on citrus trees which required some
serious hand-picking on an almost daily basis. However, the tree still
produced quite well.

If these are young fruit trees and not yet well established, you are
well advised to continue picking the snails off. If the tree is older
and larger, it's not as big an issue. We currently have a very mature
large apple tree which often has slugs and snails on the lower trunk,
but these do not seem to cause a problem to the tree.

I pick the snails when I can. I've had the trees for two years and they've
doubled-tripled in size so I consider them fairly well established. I've seen no
problems I would attribute to snails

thanks