Re: Copper strips (electronic snail barrier)


> 1.  The strip has to encircle the area you want to protect completely.  I
> had a raised bed vegetable garden, about 4'x20' that I tacked the copper
> onto.  If there was a break in the copper, even 1/2" wide, the slugs/snails
> would find it and crawl right into the bed.

A friend of mine invented an active electronic barrier for snails.  If you
are good at tinkering, here's the idea:

Get enough sections of bender-board to encircle your garden plot.  Buy
enough heavy gauge uninsulated copper wire to cover the same distance
twice.  Your goal is to create two tracks of wire on the outside of the
bender-board spaced apart by less than the diameter of a snail.  Use
something like 8-12 gauge grounding wire that is sold for wiring up
110V home wall sockets.

If you stand the bender-board  on edge, you should run one wire about 1/4"
from the top, and the next 1/4" below that.  To secure the wire, you can
drill two small holes on either side of the wire at about 6" intervals
and use a smaller gauge wire to twist-tie it down.  The goal is to
create two parallel "railroad tracks" all the way around the garden. 

Once the entire garden is encircled (solder the ends together to complete
the loop), you can tie the  two conductors to a 6-12 volt toy train
transformer.  This is adequate to zap the snails when the bridge the gap.
You can keep the transformer in the house safely away from the rain, and
run the 12V out to the snail barrier using insulated wire designed for 
hooking up sprinkler solenoids.

My friend also wired in a small 12V light bulb so that he could look out
the window at night to make sure that the circuit was powered up properly.

This works like a charm, and the only maintenance is to clear out the piles
of dead snails every so often.  If you let it go to long, they pile will
build up high enough so that snails can safely breach the bender-board
barrier by crawling over all the dead snails. 

He also tried a horizontal "train-track" arrangement, but the snails would
fry in place and the next round of snails would simply crawl right over the
dead ones.  With the vertical board, they would fall right off and you
could go a few days without having to clean up the dead ones.

If you have your garden in a raised bed, then simply put the wire around
the walls of the bed. 

Best regards,
--
Rick Walker
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