ALuminium sulphate & slugs

[OceanMomma]

Hi,

I'm still battling my slug & snail population. I've lost so many of my veges I've stopped counting or it gets too depressing. Point of interest tho' - they don't seem to like sorghum, mustard lettuce & chillies ! Anyways, I found some organic biodegradeable, blah, blah, blah stuff at the eco store that totally snuffs them. You put a ring around your plants & when you come out the next morning it is surrounded by dead fizzing snails, which is really creepy. You have to renew it every 3 or 4 days depending which resulted in me losing my last sunflower.

It is aluminuim sulphate & I was wondering if anyone knew if it really is non-toxic & biodegradeable etc etc ?

[rsps]

I jsut read about something that might be the same thing called "Sluggo" at www.weidners.com

nope I just checked its Iron phosphate:

This is a German import made of Iron Phosphate and will not harm any thing in your garden but those pesky slugs and snails. It
works by stopping the snails or slugs from eating. In a few days they just go away and die. In the meantime they can't eat your
plants. They stop eating within 8 hours of eating the Sluggo. The iron phosphate that is not eaten by snails dissolves into the soil as
a fertilizer.

Are people still debating whether aluminum can cause alzheimers? It might not be good on your garden if it does.

[OceanMomma]

My problem is with seedlings - poor things never get big enuf to be sacrifice plants. They totally ignore my silver beet. In fact, if I let them, the snails seem to nest in it! I've had 3 inch high, several leaved pumpkin plants & similar sized borlotti bean plants mowed down to ground level over night. I've lost entire 4 inch big lettuce seedlings I just planted overnight.

I will try the eggshell thing. The rest of the family eat them so I will start collecting the shells now. But I suspect that the problem is Auckland is so warm & damp that we breed an extra special turbo brand of snails that will go anything

[OceanMomma]

Yeah it's a relief to find another kiwi here. People are generally so into their bottle feeding & vaccinations & going to the doctor for "check ups" & routines around here, it's unbelievable. One of the h's friend's wives didn't bring her toddler with her to see Saffron when she was born coz she "hadn't had her shots yet"!!!!

As for the public health nurse & the free range eggs... I've heard someone else have the same problem. After all eggs do come out of a hen's butt so what do you expect ? I'm not too sure where they think battery hens eggs come from or even if they've been to a battery farm. Hedgehogs do have lots of fleas & I s'pose fleas have been known to spread diseases ( bubonic plague ). Whilst this may seem far fetched, people's attitudes show all sorts of throw backs to the good ol' days. I wonder about these things when I'm up in the middle of the night with Saffron. Maybe it's just me hallucinating from being over tired ( not more than 3 hrs sleep in a go in 7 or more months now ) but I've noticed some fascinating things when I think about it!

I used to really like having tank water. We lived out in Maraetai for a while. I hated coming back into town & having to use what tasted like water from someone's swimming pool. Soon tho' we're gonna sell our house & escape the rat race so it will be back to tank water again.

My borlotti beans are ok. they all came up, but it was the gymnastic snails who climbed up them & ate them that did them in. Actually I've had most sucess with the traditional maori plants like kumi kumi, kaanga ma & maori potatoes. I'm dying to try some kumara but I think my soil is not sandy enuf - well it's solid clay in places so I doubt there's any sand there at all !

I'll try the whole fort knox scenario on my plants next season. I'm all outta seeds now so I have to nuture what I have left so it seeds. I'm off to the beach later on today or tomorrow so I'll grab some sand from there to go with the eggs shells. It occured to me to grind up snail shells as well since they are really sharp. Also appealed to my sense of justice