Did anyone answer the beer trap recipe question?

My recipe is: a spoonful or two of vegemite and another spoonful or two of sugar (you can use marmite or promite if you prefer) in some hot water that's to melt it) - mix it up and there you have it - the beer substitute for snails. I'm not very good with exact amounts in recipes so you'll have to experiment. I believe the snails are attracted to both the sugar and the yeast (vegemite is made from the yeasty sludge left over after making beer - or so the story goes).

-- Kay (kayoz@crosswinds.net), March 07, 2000

Answers

Vegemite is hard to find outside of Australia, but we made up our own recipe last year -- we just dissolved yeast in warm water, and fed it every other day or so with sugar. Jeremy added stale bread now and then. That worked pretty well, until the dog came along and ate all of our snail traps. Now we're back to the find-and-squish method of snail control.

-- Beth (beth@xeney.com), March 09, 2000.

This may be nothing more than an old wives' tale. I've never tried it. But I have heard before that one way to deter snails is to crush eggshells and sprinkle them in a ring around your plants. The sharp edges of the eggshells are hell on the slug's little "feet."

-- Carissa Craven (carissa_craven@hotmail.com), March 09, 2000.

buy diatemous earth (I KNOW I spelled that wrong!!), works like a charm. My son loves to salt them (table salt) and watch them melt!

-- Tam (ryan@javanet.com), March 09, 2000.