snail wars

i don't want to kill them........i just want them to not eat my plants. i thought that getting rid of the ivy might reduce their numbers, but there were thousands of them chomping up the Hemerocallis after the rain..........Bob Flowerdew's book suggests making a "snail farm" out of an old washing basket filled with lettuce leaves.......might be worth a try.....because so far they've proved immune to all the snail repellents. coca shell....glass......ash.......eggshells.......nothing seems to put them off. they're strangely selective though.....preferring to wait until things that have been carefully nurtured get to just the right size..........my lovely Tradescantia "Sweet Kate", growing away beautifully and untouched, then I came out one morning....gone. I've put the dahlia "Bishop of Llandaff" in a pot this time, with snail-repelling granules round it and death threats on a plant label, don't know if they can read but it's worth a try.......so far they haven't touched it but they may be just biding their time........then there's the copper tape which apparently gives them little electric shocks if they touch it.....I suspect my snails won't be too bothered by that and will just regard it as a little extra thrill on the way to a nice dinner out..my snails seem to be able to fly, or abseil down the walls because they certainly don't have any trouble crawling over all the things that are supposed to stop them. I was right about the lupins...........stumps. as for the hostas....well, we'll see, Paul next door has constructed a "hosta cage" at the front with wire netting, raised sides, everything but an electrified fence and so far his hostas seem to be intact......the lilies-of-the-valley seem to be doing nothing and maybe i just have to accept that they're one of those things i just can't grow.........
.....same with sweet peas. i love sweet peas but i've never managed to grow them, they either get eaten by the gastropods or sucked to death by the aphids. but i'm very excited..........got a raised bed to grow veggies. i've never had any desire to grow veggies but it must be from reading all these organic gardening magazines.......what i want is for the area by the back door to be the kitchen garden, with herbs and small veg, so i thought i'd try the raised bed and see what happens........i don't know if there's any point trying to grow lettuce etc with the snail problem, so i'm putting in runner beans, onions and maybe courgettes if they sprout.....no point in growing things i don't like or won't eat. the freezer is filling up with organic veg from the boxes.....what i need to do is spend part of Saturdays sorting out the veg from the box, preparing it so it can go in the freezer and be ready to use, otherwise it just goes to waste. should probably harvest the herbs as well.......all that lovage and salad burnet, apparently it does it good to be cut, so i'll cut it......
..........so the raised bed has been filled with a mixture of commercial compost and home-made.....and watered with the special comfrey feed........covered with cocoa shell mulch and protected with copper tape......and if the snails still manage to eat the sweet peas in spite of all that then i guess they'll at least have worked up an appetite.........
......day lilies now out, at least the old one is, the new "Zebra" that i put in last year doesn't have any flowers yet but if i remember rightly the "Catherine Woodbury" took a while to establish...
.....Oriental poppies have suddenly burst out in full blaze of vulgarity, pity they don't last long....all the roses blooming as well, that organic rose has been marvellous, it gets bigger every year and flowers like mad, it's the first to come out and the flowers have a lovely lemony scent........what with that the the dwarf lilac it's a wonderful time of year for perfume....