A plague of snails in the garden can be a real horror for hobby gardeners. You happily eat your way through the salads in the vegetable patch and also find some of the flowers in the flower patch very tasty and that drives you crazy. Luckily, there are some garden snail remedies that can help you get rid of them. After we have already introduced you to egg shells and oat flakes as home remedies, among other things, we would now like to explain to you whether coffee grounds can also work against snails.
Does coffee grounds help against snails and if so, how?
Does coffee grounds drive away snails or is this one of the many myths that many garden tips ultimately turn out to be?
As you know, coffee contains caffeine, which is nothing more than a neurotoxin. While it does not cause any further damage to us humans with normal consumption, it shows a stronger effect on small animals such as snails. And you can use this for yourself or to protect your garden plants. But in order to be successful in using coffee grounds against snails, you need to use them properly. There are two ways to use it as crop protection:
- Dry coffee grounds
- Cold coffee
And what helps against snails?
Fight the mollusks with the powder
As a home remedy against snails, many use dry coffee grounds. If you’ve tried this before without success, it’s not because you did something wrong. It just so happens that the concentration of caffeine in this case is barely enough to deter the mollusks. Sometimes the bed does indeed appear to be free of snails after the application, but this is usually simply because the pests have already eaten their fill or found another place.
Here’s how to identify and eliminate snail eggs.
Alternatively, you can use unused coffee powder because the caffeine content is higher there. In order not to damage the soil with its microorganisms and beneficial insects, it is only applied twice a year at most. Not to forget the fact that this method is not particularly cheap compared to other means.
Brew coffee instead of coffee grounds against snails in the garden
In contrast to coffee grounds, brewed coffee is particularly effective against snails, preferably as strong as possible. If you let it cool down, you can then water the soil near the plant or even spray the plant itself with it. But what you should definitely keep in mind is:
- The highly concentrated caffeine in the coffee beverage can also kill important microorganisms in the soil.
- Beneficial insects are also deterred or even killed. It is therefore not recommended to use it on flowering specimens in particular.
- Too much caffeine can also harm the plant.
Protect strawberries from slug infestation by following these tips.
Conclusion: Can you fight slugs in the garden with the help of coffee?
Coffee grounds against snails is not effective. In order for the stimulant to really help against snails, the caffeine content, i.e. the ingredient that actually acts as a deterrent, must be present in high concentration, which is not the case with used coffee powder. More effective, on the other hand, are fresh coffee powder and brewed coffee as a pouring or spraying agent, which, however, has the disadvantage that should not be underestimated that useful creatures are driven away (including useful snails and earthworms), suffer damage or even die.
For this reason, it is better to opt for more environmentally friendly or more effective methods of fighting snails. How about oatmeal?