snails

I am still wanting to cut the affected (ugly) plants and sprinkle salt
around the pond. Cant anyone tell me that would be ok? How about
spritzing with salt water? These are not IN the pond but around it.






On Mon, 21 Jun 2004 20:05:30 +0000 (UTC), Andrew Burgess
wrote:

The copper on the pennies reacts with the mucus that the snails &
slugs
secrete. The reaction creates a slight electrical current, strong
enough
to discourage them from crossing the copper.

Forgive me...but this sounds like folklore. I checked around google,
and it
seems to be common knowledge! How strange! Don't you need two types
of metal
to create a current? Weird. You learn something every day. Anyway, I
am off
to collect slugs. I plan to power my pump with them and some
pennies.

Copper works to repel snails (1) but I've always doubted the
mechanism is electric current.
I suspect copper sulfate and other copper compounds on the penny,
copper is highly
toxic to invertebrates.

(1) Organic Gardening magazine once did a comparison of all the snail
repellants
on the market and copper foil was the clear winner, might have been
the only
one 100% effective, I can't recall...