Make your garden less attractive to slugs and snails

Choose the right plants for your vegetable garden. Depending on what you pick, you'll either attract or deter snails. 

The good news is that slugs and snails aren't as attracted to a Planty Garden. They like traditional gardens a lot better. 

But. If you live in a true snail zone, that won't help much.

If you only see a few snails here and there, they won't cause as many problems in your Planty Garden as they would in a regular garden. 

That's thanks to a few aspects of the Planty system:

In the Planty Garden, your garden box is full of different kinds of vegetables, herbs, and flowers.

It has of plants slugs and snails love, but also plants they hate.

The smell of the plants they hate acts as a deterrent. So they won't be as interested in your garden box. 

And they really dislike certain odors.

So, plant some fragrant things in your garden box that they hate: like mint, fennel, geraniums, garlic, thyme, marigolds, and foxglove.

But if there's a huge slug infestation, that won't be enough. 

So, spray their favorite plants with something that they think stinks: 

Here's my recipe for a homemade garlic spray.

It's a good thing the top layer of the MM-Mix stays pretty dry. Snails and slugs don't like that at all. 

But if it rains a lot, you've lost your advantage.

You can also make the area around your garden boxes less accessible to critters.

Our garden boxes have wood chips all around them. That helps - a little.

Surrounding your boxes with gravel or shells works even better. A snail won't crawl over that unless it absolutely has to.

When you water your plants at the base, you don't water the whole patch. You water each plant, one by one. 

That's how you check on each individual plant. And can spot snails quickly. 

But again, it rains for weeks, you lose the advantage. You skip the watering and the snails enjoy all the wetness.

Lucky for you, the app helps you remember to go snail hunting 😉

As soon as you see signs of damage, go hunt for the culprit. The earlier you intervene, the less damage.

Where to look? Slugs and snails hide in the dark during the day. They like out-of-the way, damp places. 

Dark loose-leaf lettuce is an ideal hiding place for snails. Even though they rarely eat the lettuce itself.

Slugs and snails prefer young plants, cabbage leaves, your best lettuce heads, and old leaves or half-decayed ones.

So you'll want to get rid of yellow and shriveled leaves right away.

On to the next tip:

Baiting and catching snails