Tender, lush shoots of young vegetables and flowers are making their way up out of the ground about now. As much as the gardener enjoys this anticipated time of year, so also do pests that somehow survived our deep February freeze enjoy the tender spring growth.
Telltale signs of holes suddenly materializing overnight is a calling card to a nefarious garden pest: perfectly round holes appearing in the middle of leaf blades. Gardeners can almost bet that snails and/or slugs are making night visits to the garden.
Snails and slugs—those slithery, slimy, slinky mollusks—are high on my list as the most disgusting of garden pests. They are similar in growth habit, but slugs are basically soft-bodied creatures without legs and without apparent outer shells. Snails have a visible outer shell, an exoskeleton, which is an external skeleton that serves as an attachment for the muscle used for locomotion. The shell provides protection from predators and reduces dehydration.
Slugs and snails secrete a mucus film that protects their delicate skin and lubricates surfaces as they travel. A streak of the film can linger long enough to be visible even after the pest has slithered away.
Both are gastropods, named from the Latin meaning “stomachfoot” because the snail uses a broad, creeping foot for locomotion. Snails secrete materials for the spiraled shells using the plant tissues they ingested as a food source; the shell is large enough for the foot to be completely withdrawn inside. They have eyespots at the tip of their tentacles but since they are nocturnal, vision is not their most important sense.
Snails are voracious eaters, chewing holes in lower leaves and are found under dense, moist foliage, in leaf debris. There are an astounding 24,000 species of terrestrial snails and they are prolific reproducers. They are hermaphroditic (both sexes), can lay 80 eggs a month six times a year, and hibernate in topsoil.
Control of these creatures is difficult. The most effective deterrence is to eliminate leaf litter and debris; next most effective is scattering commercial baits on moist ground. An organic strategy is to bury a can filled with beer below ground level—the snails reportedly are attracted to it, fall into the liquid, and drown.
Removing their breeding areas in the fall will save seedlings from their ravenous appetites in the spring.
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