Three years ago I started cleaning up the yard of this house I’d moved into. In the process of clearing out the overgrown beds, I crushed up enough snails to fill a 60 liter drum about 1/3 full. All snails were collected over three days in my back and side gardens (about 276 square meters). That yard had a serious blue tongue shortage!
Not wanting to waste the results of that mass carnage, I added water, covered and left it to ferment for eventual distribution to gardens wanting a dose of calcium carbonate.
Six months after starting the brew I uncovered it and reeled back. That stuff made comfrey soup smell positively edible! I topped up the water, quickly recovered the drum and forgot about it until recently.
Now, the snail ‘soup’ has virtually no smell. I can’t figure this out.
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Backyard South Fence garden
Comments
flowerweaver wrote:
Fermenting finished? :-P
Posted on 04 May 12 (about 1 year ago)
LillyPilly wrote:
But is it still ‘full ’o slimy goodness’, or has all the oomph disappeared along with the pong? I know the minerals will still be there, but…?
Posted on 04 May 12 (about 1 year ago)
rosemarieGardener wrote:
Sounds yummy…..not. I applaud your resourcefulness. I wonder if I sprayed slug soup on snail-vulnerable plants…..it would deter them? Actually….I would hope I wouldn’t be able to find enough slugs to make it feasible.
Posted on 04 May 12 (about 1 year ago)
LillyPilly wrote:
Snails I can deal with more easily, they crush readily. I would rather not try to kill a slug by stepping on it. How do you deal with yours if you hand pick them off?
Posted on 04 May 12 (about 1 year ago)
poppyde wrote:
After years of below average rainfall, and maybe because of the abundance of water skinks, snails are now a rarity in the our garden. Years ago, on a rainy night, I would go out with a torch and squash heaps, now when I find one I throw it back into the garden. Funny how things change.
Posted on 05 May 12 (about 1 year ago)
Tralamander wrote:
Fascinating! What a clever idea! :D
Posted on 05 May 12 (about 1 year ago)
Bernieh wrote:
I wonder if it’s just because it’s finished brewing now. Up here we don’t have big problems with snails. I never saw one at all until we moved to this property, and I got very excited when I spotted the very first one. The Kookaburras love them!
Posted on 05 May 12 (about 1 year ago)
LillyPilly wrote:
Poppyde, that is amazing! I suspect the water skinks may be helping you because even after years of dry, all I have to do is add water and its instant snails. Recently one snail managed to sneak into the very tall compost bin where I am growing horseradish. By the time I noticed what was happening, she and her dozens of teeny tiny babies (they ARE pretty cute) had left nothing of the leaves but the mid ribs!
Tralamander, I HOPE it is a good idea, but I won’t know until I either feed or poison plants with the brew ;)
Bernieh, we have lots of Kookaburras here, but they don’t appear to be on the job!
Every year I threaten to capture, purge and EAT the rotten things, but haven’t done it yet. I’ve gone so far as to collect information on making sure they are safe to eat and have amassed a fair few interesting looking recipes. Watch this space ;).
Posted on 06 May 12 (about 1 year ago)
redloon wrote:
I prefer the fermenting idea to the eating idea (I can’t stand oysters, which are a local delicacy, and snails sound like an even less appealing version of oysters)! It seems likely that the smell is gone because the organic compounds have all been broken down, so perhaps as you mentioned above only minerals remain – if diluted, it seems unlikely for this interesting fluid to do harm. 20 liters of snails. The mind boggles!!
Posted on 07 May 12 (about 1 year ago)
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