Hydrogen Peroxide for snails in orchid pots?
 

I am confronted with a rather annoying situation. In one of my Cymbidium pots I have discovered a snail chewing away at a new growth. It's the small type one. After researching the problem a bit I decided to place some stale beer and some lettuce on the pot during night time and the next morning I found 2 more on the lettuce. Since I'm not a fan of any toxic substances with my orchids unless I really have to, I tried spraying the little buggers with hydrogen peroxide 3% and surely enough they died. Now I'm thinking if it's a good idea to soak the entire orchid pot for a minute or so into peroxide, this way I'm sure to kill off all of them, as I'm sure there are others. I do use peroxide quite a lot but I only spray the unpotted plants and so far no issues. Do you think there is any danger in soaking the entire pot? Attached is a picture of the nasty bugger. Any advice is greatly appreciated and thanks!

I pour Hydrogen peroxide on my potted orchids frequently and have never had a problem. To be sure, you can try it on one plant and wait a few days to see if there is any adverse reaction.

Good luck!

I agree.
I also use it as a mouthwash - that's called putting your money where your mouth is :rofl:

Thanks guys, I will definitely try it out and let you know how it goes :)

I use iron phosphate slug and snail pellets.

You can also leave the pot in the water for a long time, like one hour. Many of the bushsnails will wake up crawl out in search of oxygen, many that are trapped in the pot will die.

Thanks NYCorchidman I will try this as well!

You can actually leave the pot in water for much longer than an hour. I've soaked plants for upwards of 24hrs.

Soaking might chase up most of the snails...but it won't do anything for the gazillion eggs in there. IME, it's virtually impossible to completely eradicate bush snails. Even using something strong doesn't appear to rid them indefinitely....they. always. seem. to. come. back. [sigh]

I agree. They are very tough pest to get rid of.

I've had lots of fun killing them with cucumber or potato slice. Other veggies might work as well but I find these two are very enticing to bush snails.

It may seem tedious but during the warm active season, luring them using the veggie slice and hand picking them makes a big difference.
One a few dendrobiums and cattleyas, I no longer see them.

On most of newly bought lady slipper, there are quite a few. I'm still having fun killing them at night.

Repotting gets rid of many of them also.
As soon as flowers fade, I plant to repot all my newly bought lady slippers as much as I hate repotting.

I find that by removing old mix and rinsing off the roots, you lose almost all of them.

Good luck!

NYCorchidman I agree with you, when repotting I now rinse the roots very well, until now I didn't use to do this as per a very wrong advice (I discovered now :)) so I hope to limit the infestation. Currently I have discovered a few more infested pots but the hydrogen peroxide method works. The Cymbidium I was telling you about is doing well, the new growth that was attacked didn't grow anymore, so that's frustrating, but it has put out a new growth that is developing quite nicely. The plant wasn't affected by this treatment so I guess it can successfully be used for snails :)