| Archive for Downsizer For an ethical approach to consumption |
| cab |
Composting with snailsIn Bob Flowerdews 'Gourmet Gardener' book, he makes a passing reference to composting using snails (having a 'snailery'). Anyone do this?I sauntered out into the garden and set one up, in an old bucket in a great big nasty old pan (which acts as a moat to keep them in), with some water in the bottom of the bucket and old plant pots for shelter. They've got bean pods, a lettuce gone to seed, scraps from calabrese, that kind of thing. No shortage of snails lurking on a wall behind the hop plant, so we'll see how they do. |
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| judith |
Are you supposed to eat the snails as well, or do they just produce a crop of snail poo for you? | ||||||
| Mary-Jane |
Ummm...so how does it work? Do you wait for snail poo? | ||||||
| cab |
Snail poo. Although yeah, it had occurred to me that this is also a simple source of protein, if they breed well in there. Although if I want to eat snails there would never be a shortatge. |
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| cab |
Thats what Bob implies. Although I thought I'd just wash water through the bucket of plant/crud and use that as a liquid feed. If it works. |
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| Mary-Jane |
Snails don't do very big poos though. | ||||||
| cab |
No, but they do a lot of them. |
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| dpack |
i use my snail cleaning frass as potting compost | ||||||
| dougal |
Will a moat reliably contain them?
Surely the biomass of the snails themselves is going to make a significant contribution to the compost - once they have 'left their shells for good'. And once you have the snail biomass being broken down too, surely you're on the route to a proper compost heap? If you want to breed snails for the table, then fine, but, pray tell what advantage is claimed for the stuff that has been *only* passed through a snail? |
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| cab |
Dunno yet 
It'll make a contribution, but snails digest and excrete loads of material. Thats all they really are, a muscle, a gut and a shell, and its a most active gut!
Dunno, and dunno. Like I said, it was a short reference in a book, I saw no difficulty in giving it a bash so I thought I'd have a play. I should think that snail poo will be fairly quick to break down, so it can't be a bad thing as a feed/conditioner for compost. |
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| dougal |
Re containment, this is interesting http://www.nal.usda.gov/afsic/AFSIC_pubs/srb96-05.htm#Pens Interesting because containment is the inverse of exclusion. As my copper dulls, its plainly much less effective. The 'fringe' sounds interesting. I really don't like the sound of the ideal conditions for reproduction http://escargot.free.fr/eng/snail.htm it sounds awfully much like current conditions - long days, damp and not too hot... and for population potential, they make rabbits sound like slowcoaches. |
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| Kinnopio |
In Flowerdew's 'no work garden' there is a little more info on the 'snailery'.
He contains it in an old laundry basket with a moat to stop little ones escaping. He also provides a saucer of fresh water and calcified seaweed for them and adds any left over lettuce, cabbage and veg peelings. Each day the droppings are washed out the bottom and used as a liquid feed (could there be a problem here with also washing out eggs and watering them onto your plants???). That's all the info there is but may be of some use? Bob also then mentions he does something similar with woodlice, by putting them in a ventilated escape proof place. He reckons they shred all sorts of things into a fine powder. He keeps this in the hen run so that the chickens eat any escapees. |
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| Mary-Jane |
 I feel somehow sure that Mr. Flowerdew smells a bit whiffy...
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