A Snail!

[DirtyCoconuts]

beer traps and just yeast traps are the best.


I used to have wars with little leaf notcher weevils on my lychee and i got in the habit of keeping a medium to large hemostat in my pocket to grab the little buggers and dispatch with great hate at the same time....it has remained a very handy tool in my gardening drawer

[Roberta]

Originally Posted by Fairorchids

Surprised that nobody has mentioned the timeproven old remedy: Beer.

Does that apply to bush snails too? Regular snails, and slugs yes... but those sneaky teensy ones tend to stay tucked away in the medium.

[Leafmite]

I didn't have luck getting rid of Bush Snails with Sluggo or any of the usual methods of getting rid of snails and slugs. Perhaps others have?

I think I just sprinkled the powdered Sevin onto the surface of the soil (they were mostly causing trouble with my other plants, not the orchids). I may have watered it in...not sure after all these years. I just remember all the dead Bush Snails laying on the top of the soil of all my plants and feeling very relieved when I had no further problems with them. They do quite a bit of damage.

It is the caffeine that kills the Bush Snails. Some study was done in Hawaii and they noticed that the Bush Snails were killed (killing Bush snails wasn't the reason for the experiment). I have been pleasantly surprised by how well it works. I did the treatment this past autumn, found a bunch of dead snails and haven't seen any damage from them since. You do need to treat all the plants as missing just one Bush Snail means that they will soon take over the collection once more.

[DirtyCoconuts]

is there any risk to putting coffee grounds onto the medium? ph?

[Leafmite]

I have not had trouble with putting the used coffee grounds in the pots of my plants. Some believe that over a long period of time, with continued applications, there is the potential for toxicity but I have not yet seen any problems in my plants and I have been putting the used coffee grounds in the pots for years.

[Ray]

Look for a bait containing metaldehyde.

[SouthPark]

I've never tried it before, and we don't seem to have it in Australia. And I haven't had snail issues in my particular region. But it'd be interesting to check out the performance of a suitable mix of 'kaffn8' with water - applied to the media.

But - if used coffee grounds is workable, go the coffee grounds - cost effective.

Nice heads-up about coffee grounds in this thread. If relatively ph neutral, and considering it to provide some nutrients when the grounds break down ------ then using coffee grounds (ie. watery solution made with it) to keep snails under control is nice.

[Roberta]

Originally Posted by Ray

Look for a bait containing metaldehyde.

Metaldehyde doesn't seem to do much to bush snails. They aren't attracted to the bait part. That's what makes them so pesky - they don't behave like their larger cousins. I don't have a lot of problems with them, but every once in awhile I'll find one right after watering... about 5 mm or less, the beast when it sticks its head out looks like a thread it is so tiny. But they can be really rough on roots, nibbling on those tender hairs on new root tips.