David in Normandy wrote:
I have seen snails climbing up the house walls. It's a mystery what
they are looking for.
Don't leave any windows unlocked, before you know it they'll nick your
telly! ;-)

I found a snail indoors on one of my orchids last week!
I have never seen that before.

"Mentalguy2k8" wrote ...
"mogga" wrote
wrote:

I've had enough of getting up every morning to find big holes in all my
plants... I've tried rounding the snails up at midnight by torchlight,
dumping them a few hundred yards away but I've just noticed a couple of
my
plants have literally dozens of tiny baby snails stuck all over them, and
I've had enough. It's them or me!!

I've put my humane compassion aside & put down some of the metaldehyde
pellets in the obvious places, taking care to cover them or put them in
inaccessible (for pets) places like down the side of the shed and
underneath, and in all the potted plants that are off the ground.

Question is, does anyone have any experience with dogs or cats sniffing
them
out and eating them? I don't think my dog (and the neighbourhood cats)
can
get to them, but would an animal work hard to get at them? I get the
feeling
I'm going to need another application within a week or two, but I don't
want
to risk putting them in the best places if the stupid dog is going to eat
them.


Get some nematodes.

How effective are they against snails? I was under the impression they
only worked on slugs under the surface?
They don't work on anything in my experience, expensive waste of money.

--
Regards
Bob Hobden
W.of London. UK

Bob Hobden wrote:
Get some nematodes.
How effective are they against snails? I was under the impression they
only worked on slugs under the surface?
They don't work on anything in my experience, expensive waste of money.

We have a patch of strawberries that were nematoded and a patch that
weren't, and I can promise you that they make a huge difference.

On 23/08/2010 15:10, Mentalguy2k8 wrote:


Question is, does anyone have any experience with dogs or cats sniffing
them out and eating them? I don't think my dog (and the neighbourhood
cats) can get to them, but would an animal work hard to get at them? I
get the feeling I'm going to need another application within a week or
two, but I don't want to risk putting them in the best places if the
stupid dog is going to eat them.

Metaldehyde slug pellets do seem to be attractive to cats - some years
back, the vet practice I was working at had two dead young cats brought
in. The owner was questioned about possible poisoning, particularly
slug pellets and replied that the cats had no access to them. On post
mortem the stomachs of both cats were *full* of slug pellets. It was
assumed that they'd got into a neighbour's shed where they'd discovered
an open packet of slug pellets which they'd gorged on. There were far
too many 'clean' pellets to have been picked up simply by licking a
sparse application off the soil.

wrote
Bob Hobden wrote:
Get some nematodes.
How effective are they against snails? I was under the impression they
only worked on slugs under the surface?
They don't work on anything in my experience, expensive waste of money.

We have a patch of strawberries that were nematoded and a patch that
weren't, and I can promise you that they make a huge difference.

In your case slug pellets would have worked better/cheaper I'm sure,
especially as you probably had the plants netted to stop the birds eating
the fruit so no reason not to use them.
In my case I tried the advised repeated treatments on our potato patch and
did not notice any improvement on normal, so as far as I'm concerned they
don't work on ground slugs and at the price they charge how many sacks of
organic potatoes can one buy.

--
Regards
Bob Hobden
W.of London. UK

On Mon, 23 Aug 2010 18:35:05 +0200, David in Normandy
wrote:

On 23/08/2010 17:59, Stephen Wolstenholme wrote:
On Mon, 23 Aug 2010 16:23:02 +0100, "Mentalguy2k8"
wrote:
They're determined little critters!

I have seen snails climbing up the house walls. It's a mystery what
they are looking for.


Don't leave any windows unlocked, before you know it they'll nick your
telly! ;-)

They can watch the TV from the wall above the window. They don't even
need a license.

"Sacha" wrote
"Bob Hobden" said:
"Mentalguy2k8" wrote ...
"mogga" wrote
wrote:

I've had enough of getting up every morning to find big holes in all
my
plants... I've tried rounding the snails up at midnight by torchlight,
dumping them a few hundred yards away but I've just noticed a couple
of my
plants have literally dozens of tiny baby snails stuck all over them,
and
I've had enough. It's them or me!!

I've put my humane compassion aside & put down some of the metaldehyde
pellets in the obvious places, taking care to cover them or put them
in
inaccessible (for pets) places like down the side of the shed and
underneath, and in all the potted plants that are off the ground.

Question is, does anyone have any experience with dogs or cats
sniffing them
out and eating them? I don't think my dog (and the neighbourhood cats)
can
get to them, but would an animal work hard to get at them? I get the
feeling
I'm going to need another application within a week or two, but I
don't want
to risk putting them in the best places if the stupid dog is going to
eat
them.


Get some nematodes.

How effective are they against snails? I was under the impression they
only worked on slugs under the surface?
They don't work on anything in my experience, expensive waste of money.

Oh, Bob - they do! We use nematodes on the Mypex here and in 11 years
I've seen one vine weevil and the slug numbers are very low indeed. But
it's important to keep it going. They're more successful on slugs than
snails, though.

Sorry Sacha, but that is not my experience with ground slugs in our potatoes
and the retail cost is much too high to keep up the constant application
year after year without seeing any improvement within the first season.
Impossible to use slug pellets on ground slugs, a seasons use of Nematodes
showed no improvement**, so we plant enough (slug resistant) potatoes to
throw away those with large holes, it's also the cheapest option by far.
(and probably the most environmentally friendly)
This, however, does restrict the varieties of potato we grow.
Other uses for different Nematodes may work but I would need a lot of
convincing to sport out the sort of money they charge retail when there are
tried and tested alternatives and at a fraction of the cost.
** possibly due to soil type, but who knows.
--
Regards
Bob Hobden
W.of London. UK

Bob Hobden wrote:
We have a patch of strawberries that were nematoded and a patch that
weren't, and I can promise you that they make a huge difference.
In your case slug pellets would have worked better/cheaper I'm sure,
especially as you probably had the plants netted to stop the birds eating
the fruit so no reason not to use them.

Well, maybe so, but we don't use slug pellets.

In my case I tried the advised repeated treatments on our potato patch and
did not notice any improvement on normal, so as far as I'm concerned they
don't work on ground slugs and at the price they charge how many sacks of
organic potatoes can one buy.

Just checked with Nick and he says he did 2 lots of nematodes onthe
potatoes, and although we did get some slug damage, it's nothing like they
were before we discovered nemotoding.

On 23 Aug, 15:10, "Mentalguy2k8" wrote:
I've had enough of getting up every morning to find big holes in all my
plants... I've tried rounding the snails up at midnight by torchlight,
dumping them a few hundred yards away but I've just noticed a couple of my
plants have literally dozens of tiny baby snails stuck all over them, and
I've had enough. It's them or me!!

I've put my humane compassion aside & put down some of the metaldehyde
pellets in the obvious places, taking care to cover them or put them in
inaccessible (for pets) places like down the side of the shed and
underneath, and in all the potted plants that are off the ground.

Question is, does anyone have any experience with dogs or cats sniffing them
out and eating them? I don't think my dog (and the neighbourhood cats) can
get to them, but would an animal work hard to get at them? I get the feeling
I'm going to need another application within a week or two, but I don't want
to risk putting them in the best places if the stupid dog is going to eat
them.

You can discourage them a lot by removing the places they lurk by
day.Ie, tidy the place up and remove bits of wood, bricks, stone etc.
I also weedkill the long grass round my vegetable plot. Doing all
this reduces the population enormously. The problem is when the
veggies get big and then they can lurk in them. Pellets it is then!

In article tjvco.103743$Vv6.62517@hurricane,
says...
I've had enough of getting up every morning to find big holes in all my
plants... I've tried rounding the snails up at midnight by torchlight,
dumping them a few hundred yards away but I've just noticed a couple of my
plants have literally dozens of tiny baby snails stuck all over them, and
I've had enough. It's them or me!!

I've put my humane compassion aside & put down some of the metaldehyde
pellets in the obvious places, taking care to cover them or put them in
inaccessible (for pets) places like down the side of the shed and
underneath, and in all the potted plants that are off the ground.

Question is, does anyone have any experience with dogs or cats sniffing them
out and eating them? I don't think my dog (and the neighbourhood cats) can
get to them, but would an animal work hard to get at them? I get the feeling
I'm going to need another application within a week or two, but I don't want
to risk putting them in the best places if the stupid dog is going to eat
them.


I presume you are talking about the standard blue pellets?
Some dogs (notably Labs) will eat them and may become ill, most dogs and
cats wont touch them, but if worried I suggest you buy the slightly more
expensive pellets based on Iron Phosphate which are harmless to animals
and birds, they work by preventing the snail or slug from eating so it
crawls off and dies (but does not give you the satisfaction of seeing the
blighters lying dead around your plants!) and since its not a poison even
if a thrush takes a snail which has eaten a pellet its going to be ok.
They also last longer on the ground
--
Charlie Pridham, Gardening in Cornwall
www.roselandhouse.co.uk
Holders of national collections of Clematis viticella cultivars and
Lapageria rosea

The safest way to make sure that pets do not eat pellets is to use a Slug Bell, I have a few (and a few cats) the pellets are contained in a basket which is covered by the bell shaped top. The device is placed in the ground and slugs are attracted to it but the pellets are not accessible to pets, birds etc.

On Mon, 23 Aug 2010 16:59:37 +0100, Stephen Wolstenholme
wrote:

On Mon, 23 Aug 2010 16:23:02 +0100, "Mentalguy2k8"
wrote:

Did you find the pellets effective?


Not really. They kill slugs on contact but there always seems to be
more live ones lurking about.

The only slug/snail-resistant plants I seem to have in my garden are weeds!!

My garden has slowly reached a balance of slug free plants. I think
the majority are plants that I would describe as a bit too rough for
slugs to eat. Then there are a lot of very small bushes. At the moment
the flowering areas are dominated by geraniums and Saponaria that
slugs don't touch.

Everything else has big holes in the leaves, and various shoots chewed off
at the base. I even used an old shelving unit to put the more fragile plants
onto, but they're chewed as well and there is "snail poo" all over the top
of it. Last week I found a slug in a hanging basket, he must have climbed a
6-foot fence and made his way along the bracket into the plant

They're determined little critters!

I have seen snails climbing up the house walls. It's a mystery what
they are looking for.

Steve

Mortar! They've nibbled it out of a course of bricks on a friend's
porch.
--
http://www.bra-and-pants.com
http://www.holidayunder100.co.uk

In article ,
mogga wrote:
On Mon, 23 Aug 2010 16:59:37 +0100, Stephen Wolstenholme
wrote:

I have seen snails climbing up the house walls. It's a mystery what
they are looking for.

Mortar! They've nibbled it out of a course of bricks on a friend's
porch.

In areas with a lot of rain, they might be teredo :-)


Regards,
Nick Maclaren.

wrote...
Bob Hobden wrote:
We have a patch of strawberries that were nematoded and a patch that
weren't, and I can promise you that they make a huge difference.
In your case slug pellets would have worked better/cheaper I'm sure,
especially as you probably had the plants netted to stop the birds eating
the fruit so no reason not to use them.

Well, maybe so, but we don't use slug pellets.

In my case I tried the advised repeated treatments on our potato patch
and
did not notice any improvement on normal, so as far as I'm concerned they
don't work on ground slugs and at the price they charge how many sacks of
organic potatoes can one buy.

Just checked with Nick and he says he did 2 lots of nematodes onthe
potatoes, and although we did get some slug damage, it's nothing like they
were before we discovered nemotoding.

Besides that they didn't work for me the small 3 treatment pack for 18 weeks
protection is about £29.00, that is an awful lot of organic potatoes in a
supermarket. Without the nematodes would you have thrown away £29.00 worth
of potatoes, do you even grow £29.00 worth of potatoes? Is it anywhere near
cost effective?

--
Regards
Bob Hobden
W.of London. UK

For gardeners, about £10 for 40sq m. You probably get them a lot cheaper!