Our gardens are our pride and joy of our homes — one of life’s simple pleasures is to watch the flowers we so carefully planted and maintained bloom into glorious color. It is therapeutic to weed and water our gardens, but the activity can quickly become arduous when pests start to invade. Here in San Diego, one such pest that tries to infiltrate our beautiful gardens is the snail.
Are Snails Good Or Bad For Your Garden?
The damage snails can cause ranges from nuisance damage to a potential threat to human health and safety. Below are some of the reasons why it is important to seek professional pest control help if you find snails in your San Diego garden:
- Snails eat bulbs: If your goal is to grow a glorious flower garden in your yard, snails could put a stop to that before your flowers even have the chance to bloom. Snails are known to eat entire bulbs after they have been planted in soil, not even giving them the chance to even grow a stalk.
- Flower petals: Snails are excellent climbers. If your flowers have the chance to grow and bloom, it won’t be long until snails have climbed up the stalks and chewed their way through the petals.
- Diseases: While the damage listed above is definitely annoying and cause enough to seek professional help to exterminate them from your San Diego garden, the real reason it is important to seek pest control assistance with snails is that they are capable of spreading dangerous diseases, such as rat lungworm. Snails that eat the feces of infected rats will continue this cycle, and when a human catches it from exposure in their gardens, the disease will migrate to the human’s brain, which can cause serious damage to your health.
What Attracts Snails To Your Garden?
The first step to being able to control the snail populations in your San Diego garden is to know what attracts them there in the first place. Below are some things that snails are attracted to:
- Nutrient-dense plants: Snails prefer to feast on plants that are rich, and nutrient-dense. Examples of these kinds of plants include marigold, lettuce, and cauliflower.
- Wooden logs and stones: As with all pests, snails are really just looking for convenient shelter, food, and water. Things like wooden logs and stones in your garden provide the perfect shelter for them to hide in or under.
- Shrubs and tall grass: If there is an abundance of weeds or other shrubbery in your San Diego garden, this will attract more snails, as it provides extra cover for them to eat, drink, and breed.
- Wet soil: Snails require a certain amount of body moisture to survive and thrive, and wet soil allows them to maintain the level of moisture needed to do so. Having consistently wet soil in your garden or yard will appeal to snails and encourage them to set up shop.
Should I Remove Snails From My Yard And Garden?
As with any pests, snails are incredibly difficult to remove on your own. Sure, you may be able to remove a few individuals, but it does not treat the underlying causes that are attracting them to your San Diego garden to begin with, and it does not stop them from continuing to breed. Only a professional pest control company with the right tools can permanently remove a snail infestation.
In addition, it is not recommended you try to remove snails from your yard or garden on your own because of the dangers they pose to human health. Rat lungworm is just one of the many illnesses snails can pass on, and exposure to them can cause serious damage to you or your family’s health.
The Key To Keeping Snails Away From Your San Diego
Allswell Here has the experience and proven results needed to exterminate snails in your San Diego garden, as well as keep them from coming back. Here, our technicians are armed with the skills and tools needed to safely and effectively remove existing snail populations, and implement proven strategies to ensure they do not return. Gardening is supposed to be a soothing activity that fills you with joy — let us handle the pests for you. Call us today!