The presence of Snails in the garden It can turn into a real plague: these small animals, in fact, are greedy for leaves and flowers and with their appetite they risk frustrating hours spent placing, pruning and watering our plants.
The snails are active especially at night or after the rains, when the ground is wet. They feed on young sprouts, tender leaves and flowers, leaving shiny holes behind him and a trail of mucus. In a short time, they can compromise the entire harvest or destroy an ornamental border.
Before resorting to pesticides and other polluting chemicals, let’s see how we can get rid of the problem of snails in a natural way, through four simple but very effective passages, also defined as a method of the 4 P.
The so -called 4 P method – prevention, protection, predators, grip – is an ecological and sustainable system to manage snails without using chemicals harmful to the environment or health.
(Read also: Garden snails: 10 natural remedies to remove them from your plants)
Prevention
To prevent snails from eating all our gardening work, it is better to choose to populate the garden with resistant plants that are able to bear the bites of the animals. Then fortify our plants with natural fertilizers and with specific revigorations for plants, in order to make them more resistant to the attack of snails.
Protection
If we have beautiful seedlings in our garden and we do not want snails to ruin them, we can protect them by creating real physical barriers that will remove unwanted animals. Pieces of broken shells or egg shells, pebbles, but also coarse sand are excellent since they create a disseminated and inhospitable soil in the presence of snails. Among other things, the shells and shells of the eggs also represent an excellent natural fertilizer and not polluting for plants.
Predators
We can exploit, to our advantage and our garden, the natural food chain. The snails, in fact, represent a succulent prey for the birds, which hunt and still eat them alive. If we have a bowl with bird feed inside our garden, we will invite the birds to “visit us” more often and these will start looking for and eat even small animals – like snails. Alternatively, we can adopt a small hedgehog: this animal also feeds on snails.
Grip
Finally, we can arm ourselves with a little courage and “capture” the snails that infest our garden and then free them in a place where their presence is not disturbing to anyone – for example in uncultivated areas or in urban green.
Snails are not the number one enemy of nature, but if not controlled, they can ruin entire green corners in a few days. The 4 P method offers an intelligent, natural and respectful approach of the environment. Just a little attention and constancy to keep the garden luxuriant, healthy and … without holes.
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