How To Use Coffee Grounds For Snails

You don’t have to kill those annoying garden snails in order to keep them from eating your plants. In fact, you can use your morning coffee as a non-lethal weapon against them. When they come into contact with your coffee grounds snails will turn right around and leave your plants alone.

Hungry Plant-Eating Pests

While they may not have the size of many other backyard pests, snails can do a lot of damage in the garden. And unfortunately, their favorite foods are often the ones you’re trying to grow. They love to eat plants and especially vegetables. But they’ll also devour various herbs and flowers too.

Many gardeners want to get rid of pesky snails without harming them and at the same time without using any potentially dangerous chemicals. Used coffee grounds are ideal for this job. So instead of throwing them away, you can put them to good use fighting snails instead.

Luckily snails along with their close relatives, slugs, are both highly sensitive to caffeine. And while the amount of caffeine in the grounds isn’t enough to kill them, it is enough to deter them. So by using coffee grounds slugs and snails will want to stay away. It’s a two-for-one deal!

How To Get Rid Of Slugs And Snails With Coffee Grounds

Applying the grounds is simple. Just be sure you let them cool down before using them. To help keep slugs and snails out of a general area such as your garden sprinkle your coffee grounds freely around on top of the soil. To protect specific plants or even groups of plants create a solid ring of coffee around them.

It’s really as easy as that! However, you will need to keep in mind that those slug and snail repellent coffee grounds don’t last forever, they will decompose. While this can be beneficial for your soil, and feeding garden worms, it also means you’ll need to replenish your garden or rings with fresh grounds periodically. If you don’t, you may wake up to find that your favorite plants have become a meal for some slimy pests.

Other Natural Snail Repellent Alternatives

For those who want an all-natural snail repellent, coffee grounds can work for sure, but they aren’t your only choice. In fact, eggshells are a popular choice as well. And like coffee grounds, they are something that most households end up throwing away on a regular basis.

Simply crush up the eggshells and sprinkle them throughout the garden and around specific plants you’d like to protect. Snails don’t like the sharp edges of the eggshells since they have soft bodies and will purposely avoid passing over them. Using eggshells in the garden will also help to add a calcium boost to your soil.

Powdered ginger, diatomaceous earth, and wood ashes are also known to work as well. For a more permanent deterrent that won’t need to be continually replenished, try copper tape. When the mucous on the snail’s skin comes into contact with the copper it reacts, giving the snail the equivalent of an electric shock. For this reason, many gardeners use copper tape to surround raised garden beds, potted plants, and entire gardens.

Using coffee grounds for snails is a free, safe, and humane choice. However, you will need to remember to re-apply them periodically.

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