Although snails and slugs prefer wet areas over dry ones, they do exist in desert gardens. Here are some ways to recognize and solve the problem.
All the widespread species of snails and slugs and the most damaging to plants originated in Europe.
A mollusk, the snail and slug can be found all over North America, and although they prefer wet areas, they are established in dry and desert areas as well. The difference between the two are that snails have spiral shells and slugs have none.
The snails that are most destructive to desert gardens are terrestrial snails and slugs, and all these are animals without legs or wings, and have soft but muscular, slimy bodies.
These animals have strong, raspy mouth parts that scrape tissue off a plant.
They are nocturnal and like moist areas.
Natural controls
- Reduce habitat by cleaning debris from under plants.
- Remove weeds from around plants as these provide shelter and food for young snails which tend to stay close to the ground.
- Thin plants. This will allow air to circulate around the bases of the plants and discourage snail and slug infestations.
- Handpick snails and slugs. About two hours after sunset, go into your garden with a flashlight and handpick the mollusks. Place them in a bucket of water with about five percent rubbing alcohol.
- Trap them. There are a variety of natural slug and snail traps available to you. Some you can make yourself, others are available commercially. Upturned halves of grapefruit or an upturned garden pot will encourage the animals to collect under them. Beer traps (jar caps filled with beer and buried to their lip also works very well, although in dry desert areas they are apt to evaporate before morning, reducing their effectiveness).
- Buy traps. There are commercially available traps, which work along the same principles as beer traps.
- Getting rid of live snails. The humane way of killing snails and slugs is to simply put them in a pail of salty water.
- Encourage predators. Chickens, ducks, frogs and toads all like to eat snails and slugs.
