Spring is here in New Zealand; temperature is getting warmer, day-light saving started and we have a lot longer sun!
It is a start of season when we can sow some seeds and see them grow.
Our children love growing plants in our garden. They water them and enjoy watching vegetables grow on them.
Unfortunately we had snail invasion in one of our vegetable garden….. there are some pictures of snails below, so be warned if you don’t like watching insects.
Enemy of vegetable garden: Snails and slugs
At the end of winter, we planted some seed potatoes in our home garden.
Potatoes are very easy to grow in home vegetable gardens. If you plant them late winter or early spring, they will grow fast during spring, and you can start harvesting in early summer.
Our potatoes were growing pretty well, until this happened to one of our fastest growing plant….
Noooo!! Being eaten!!
There are only stems left with hardly anything left of the leaves. We really should have done something before it gets this bad.
We have not spotted any worms and bugs that eat potato leaves yet, so we suspected slugs and snails to be the culprit.
It will only get worse as the temperature becomes warmer, so we quickly headed to a gardening store.
Purchased Snail and Slug pellets!
At our local Mitre10, we went to the gardening section and purchased Yates Blitzem pellets for killing slugs and snails.
The reason why we chose this product was because it was recommended to us by a friend, who grows and sells vegetable seedlings.
Yates Blitzem：A famous product!
For 500g, it was about 5 dollars? It was reasonably priced.
Content looks like this. Blue-green colored small pellets.
These pellets contain poisons that attracts snails and slugs, and kills them when they touch or eat these pellets.
Because these are poisonous, you do need to be careful so that small children and pets will not touch them.
According to the instruction on the box, you place them on the soil about 5cm apart between each pellet.
We often grew vegetables in our garden, but this is the first time we use slug & snail pellets like these.
Snail & Slug pellets are so effective!
Following day after placing Snail and slug pellets in our potato garden…. it is really effective. How do we know that? well….
There are many snails laying in our potato garden floor! They normally hide pretty well so we cannot spot them.
Like these snails… there are many of them, here and there…
Are they dead after eating the snail & slug pellet? So we had a closer look…
This one is upside down, cannot move well and bubbling!
EEEEEEK! Gross & scary! I feel so bad for them!! (although I tried to get rid of them)
We removed these intoxicated snails from our vegetable garden and buried them on a corner of our lawn.
There were about 10 snails just for this day. We were surprised how many there were, because we normally cannot spot them.
We were very impressed with how well these snail & slug pellets worked.
What is the active ingredient in Yates Blitzem？
The snail & slug pellets were so effective that I became worried what kind of ingredient is in them.
Specifications about Yates Blitzem are easily found on Yates official website below.
https://www.yates.co.nz/products/pest-control/snails-and-slugs/blitzem-snail-and-slug-pellets/
The main active ingredient is…. 15g/kg Metaldehyde
This “metaldehyde” is a compound frequently used for killing snail & slug, but also used sometimes as fire starter fuel for camping.
Refer to：Wikipedia
There are a lot of information about metaldehyde on the internet, like this one.
“metaldehyde damages the mucus cells causing the creature to produce masses of slime and dehydrate. If not killed outright, it’s immobilised and unable to retreat to its daytime shelters”
引用元：http://www.slugoff.co.uk/killing-slugs/
Dehydration and paralysis!
So that’s why those snails were rolling on the ground after using snail & slug pellets…. Scary!
Of course these are toxic to human and other creatures too, if ingested. There are many reports of pets intoxicated after ingesting metaldehyde containing pellets. Even some cases of children as well.
After finding this out, I became concerned about using them on vegetable garden… do they get absorbed by vegetables that we are growing there?
But apparently, metaldehyde is used widely for protecting vegetables and crops from snails/slug all over the world.
Some say that these pellets are better than other spray-on insecticides that are directly applied to the plant.
Metaldehyde containing snail/slug pellets are also used for growing potatoes too.
Tips for using Slug & Snail pellets
So some tips for using slug & snail pellets safely is as follows:
- Do not let these pellets directly touch vegetables you are growing.
- Place one pellet per 5-10cm as instructed on the package. Do not use more.
- Do not sprinkle from above vegetables – place them directly on the ground.
- These baits contain chemoattractant that attracts snails and slugs.
- You could place pellets on a flat stone/dish next to the plant (not directly touching the floor) and let snail/slug come to it.
- Place pellets near but outside of planters and pots. This way snails/slugs will be lured out of pots and planters to the bait.
- Remove slugs/snails that ingested pellets and are found on the ground immediately.
- You can also set up a trap by setting up “hide-place” for snails/slugs and place baits there.
Taken together, keeping a safe distance between your pellets and precious vegetables would assure that your vegetables will not be contaminated.
You do need to stay extra cautious that your pets and small children will not touch them.
It is probably a good idea to do this once at the beginning of spring ~ summer to kill off majority of snails as you should not use them when your crops are close to harvesting.
Go potatoes! Grow!
Summary of Snail & Slug pellets
So I was very impressed with how effective these Yates Blitzem snail & slug pellets are.
It almost works too well that it gets me worried about chemicals inside.
But when you start thinking about it, you are not sure what kind of insecticides and chemicals people may have used for the commercial vegetables.
Regulations are in place, but it is up to the growers how carefully to use these chemicals.
We are better off in New Zealand because most vegetables are home-grown and I am sure we can trust our local farmers…
I can also understand how some people love organic vegetables.
But since I cannot afford to always buy organic vegetables, I guess I will wash our leafy vegetables really well.
Anyhow, if you have concerns about snails and slugs attacking your precious vegetable garden or flower garden…
as you can see above, snail & slug pellets work really well.
