- Garden snails are native to the Mediterranean
- But they’ve travelled as far as California and Australia
- (People being followed by snails is a real thing.)
- Growing snails on purpose is called heliciculture
- Growing them by accident is called good biodiversity
- If snails threaten your garden, make it firefly-friendly
- Because fireflies eat snails and slugs
- So do frogs, lizards and birds
- Or you can eat the snails yourself
- They’re a good source of protein – and parasitic worms
- I prefer biodiversity to gastronomy, but you do you
Tag Archives: vrtnipolz
Catch of the day: an elderly snail
When two garden snails really like each other, they show it by mutual stabbing. They’re equipped with special love darts for this very purpose – they’re hermaphrodites and their love dueling, which goes on for hours, is how they exchange seed.
Throughout history, garden snails have loved hitching a ride with humans and this is how they’ve managed to reach some of the farthest corners of the Earth. They’re cute in their own right but their appetite can spell disaster for crops in areas where their natural predators are scarce. Good biodiversity is your friend – frogs, birds, lizards and many bugs will happily keep snails in check for you.
But if all else fails, you can always scare garden snails away with coffee grounds – they seriously dislike coffee. That’s probably for the best because the idea of fast-moving, twitchy snails is borderline disturbing.