JessiccaThe Gruesome Battle with the Snails
May 25th 2007 01:45
Whenever you start you plant your own vegetables, you care for them, tend to them closely and hope for the best harvest.
For me, I too was like the “farmers” (although I only had 3 pots of local vegetables called the “Salem leaves” – called by the locals and I think it’s from the mint family but not sure the actual name) looking after the vegetables and tried not to put pesticides and water them with filtered water. I wanted to see using as much natural resources to grow vegetables would produce what sort of harvest.
It was pretty good for the first 3 months, hard to grow them as I tried to plant them hydroponic way. I ended up resort to blended soil, and put some fish salt fertilizer for it to grow. Everything was pretty all right and I got my first harvest. I even started putting fruit and vegetable fibre waste (from juicing) and pour them into the pot covered with soil. The vegetables bloomed and I was happy.
All this was heaven harvest until I used the watermelon skin (the white portion) as fertilizer. I grind them up and poured into the pots, covered with a layer of soil. You can see the vegetables bloomed so many leaves until I can harvest twice to three times a week, and it kept growing out more leaves. I was happy but until two days ago, I had a horror of my life, one pot of my vegetables was left empty, and the other two pots had some branches missing! That was the latest pot of vegetables grown and the vegetable plants were still small. It left some trace of worm like pattern and I thought the worms got them. Then I remembered, last week there were tiny snails trying to climb up the vegetable pot. I threw them across the road, slinging them far away. I know from the dunk shape they must have survived and grown bigger. So I tried to hunt them down.
For two days early in the morning I didn’t manage to find them, and I just couldn’t find when they actually attack my pots. All the mysteries solved when I came home 30 minutes before midnight, and to my horror, there were about 12 snails at least, from the shell length about 2cm length to about 5cm length, climbing up the pots! Those are medium size snails and it was so hard to pull them out of the pot. When I touched their shells, they quickly hide into their homes with the squealing sound. I didn’t even know they could squeal! It’s sounded like when you tried to squeeze the last bits of toothpaste or even squeezing out a tube of cream. “Shweeeeeze!” it sounded, and the bigger they are the louder the sound is.
It was really gruesome. I had to pick them up, threw them high and let them hit on the road. Some just bounced off, others the shells cracked. Some even squashed by the on coming cars (you can hear their shell crack). Yes… it was a gruesome battle. Every time I picked them up you can hear the “Shweeeeeze!” sound, and when you hear this in the middle of the night… you’ll just feel the Goosebumps trickling at the back of your neck.
After attending to the pots, I went scouting around the green lawn and found two 2cm shell sized snails, and to my horror, there are more at the gate dear the dustbin, all about 4 – 5cm shell sized snails. Higher and higher I threw them up and let it hit on the ground. Yes it’s cruel, but I can’t just step on them and let their shell break. I did that long ago when I found them on my family’s vegetable patch and sent them to the chicken coop where the cock and hen waited patiently as I broke the snails’ shells.
(Those were the time I got fully grown snails, about 7cm length shells, and boy were those feathers bright and shiny after “snail diet”)
I am not sure whether I have got rid off of them. I am sure there are still many out there in the lawn as it was dark and late and I didn’t want to hunt them out. I shall check my pots again tomorrow night and see whether I have to start another gruesome battle, but in the mean time I spread some salt on the surface of the soil… Thank goodness for McDonalds salt cachets!
What have I learned from all this?
1. Don’t use watermelon as fertilizer anymore.
2. You just have to be careful of snails. They can just pop out anywhere!
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