Learn how to do anything: How to Use Beer to Get Rid of Snails in Your Garden

Wednesday, October 25, 2017

How to Use Beer to Get Rid of Snails in Your Garden

Snails and slugs can be a real headache. These small, slimy creatures reproduce quickly and love to feed on the leaves and roots of your plants. Fortunately, getting rid of garden snails with beer is quick and easy. Just fill a small container with beer and let the snails climb in and drown.

EditSteps

EditBuilding and Maintaining a Basic Trap

Find a suitable container for your beer trap. The container needs to be deep enough to allow slugs and snails to fall in without being able to crawl out again. Deep containers also ensure that the beer won't evaporate too quickly. You could use a tuna fin, an empty aluminum pie tin, or a small dish. Plastic drinking cups, leftover yogurt containers, and the bottoms of plastic soda bottles are also suitable.^[1]
Bury your beer trap container in your garden, keeping the rim one inch (two cm) above the soil. If the container is at or below the soil’s level, you might also kill the ground beetles that eat slugs. If the lip of the container is too high, though, the garden snails will find entering the container difficult.^[2]
- Use a simple hand trowel to dig a spot for the container in your garden. Plant the container snugly into the hole.
- Backfill the hole with soil if necessary to achieve a sturdy fit.
Set the traps three feet apart. Beer traps only attract snails from the immediate area. The number of traps you’ll need to make depends on the size of your garden. If you have a garden with perimeters of nine feet (three meters) by nine feet (three meters), for instance, you’ll need nine beer traps.^[3]
Fill your trap halfway with beer. Snails aren’t picky about what sort of beer they drink. Any good brew will do!^[4]
- As an alternative to beer, you could mix two tablespoons of flour, 1/2 teaspoon of brewer’s yeast, one teaspoon of sugar, and two cups of warm water. Use this mixture instead of beer.^[5]
Add some yeast to make the trap more attractive. A few pinches of baker’s yeast can make the trap even more enticing for garden snails. Just sprinkle the yeast over the beer and mix it in with a spoon.^[6]
Empty the traps every two or three days. The beer will lose its potency over time, so you’ll have to pour the old beer out and add new beer every couple days. If it rains in your beer traps, you’ll have to empty them then, too.^[7]
- There’s no need to empty traps filled with dead snails. Other snails will be attracted to their friends’ decomposing bodies.
- Pour the beer and dead garden snails into a disused part of your yard or into your compost pile.^[8]

EditMaking a Plastic Bottle Trap

Cut off the top third of a two-gallon plastic soda bottle. Drill three holes into the bottom and top half. The holes should have a diameter of about 1/4 cm (1/8 inch) and be located equidistant from each other. They should be about 1/2 cm (1/4 inch) from the edge you cut.^[9]
Join the top half and the bottom half. Remove the cap from the top and stick it into the bottom half upside down. Rotate the two pieces so that the holes line up. Pass a twist tie or some thread through the holes to tie the two pieces together.^[10]
Plant the container in the soil with the lip of it one inch (two cm) above the edge of the soil. Since this beer trap is longer, it will require a bit more digging than the other sort of beer trap. Use a hand trowel to dig out enough soil so that when the trap is placed in it, the top edge rises about one inch above the edge of the soil.^[11]
- Maintenance and placement of this larger trap is the same as with the regular traps. In other words, fill it halfway with beer, sprinkle some yeast in it for greater efficacy, empty it every two or three days, and place it three feet from other traps.
- This trap could prove more effective than a regular beer trap, since snails will be unable to leave once they slide in to get the beer.