California GArden Archives

FROM THE ARCHIVES

© SAN DIEGO FLORAL ASSOCIATION

These stories may not be published in any form or copied onto another medium without written permission from the San Diego Floral Association.

Reprinted from July/August 2016, Volume 107 No. 4

Although Kate O. Sessions contributed hundreds of articles to California Garden from its inception in 1909 until her death in 1940, she did not write about insects as friend or foe. She did take an uncompromising stand on snails which were harassing San Diego gardeners then as now. Sessions had no qualms about the use of poisons and advised stepping on snails “with vim.” In a follow-up column 11 years later, she wrote that tobacco stems were effective against snails and urged everyone to use them to “clean the town of snails.”   – Nancy Carol Carter

August 1911 Volume 3, Number 2 

A Serious Pest

By Kate O. Sessions

Part I:  In spite of all that is being said and written pertaining to floriculture and horticulture at the resent time the snail in the shell and without one (the slug)... is fast becoming a very serious pest everywhere in California and is particularly on the increase in San Diego. The remedy seems to be only eternal vigilance and killing every one possible. A mixture of bran with sugar and Paris green is the best poison, keeping the mix dry. They also like oranges and cabbage leaves which can be laid about for bait, but one must rise while it is still night or kill them feeding during the night. Another plan is to lay boards about beneath which they may hide when they can be gathered during the day. Stacked lime sprinkled very generously over them will kill, but lime laid about plants will not keep them away. As soon as the lime has been sprinkled or moist it is no longer of use.

The slug is more disagreeable to gather and destroy and this hateful pest, the Helix shell, is the snail eaten by the French. The trouble of preparing these snails for the table makes them a costly side dish for hotels and restaurants to handle and so their sale is limited.

Snails lay their pearly white eggs in holes in the ground in abundance which they make in some wonderful way with their soft bodies, and summer is the breeding season. So the season for faithful hunting and destroying should be from March until August. At night they leave their hiding places to crawl on damp places or on dry weeds or piles of rubbish and from 9 until 12 o’clock at night they are moving and can be picked up and thrown into a can of lime or cheap salt or stepped on with vim. Often a bush can be severed and shaken during the day and many will drop to the ground—and then step upon them. 

. . . Remedies and experiences with snails and slugs should be reported [to California Garden] to help on the work of their eradication.

Nancy Carol Carter is a widely-published historian, a Balboa Park volunteer, a Floral Association board member and associate editor of California Garden.

© SAN DIEGO FLORAL ASSOCIATION and © Nancy Carol Carter.
These stories may not be published in any form or copied onto another media without written permission from San Diego Floral Association.