I never hated snails until I moved to California. They are all over the place where I live. They eat my plants and leave behind gross slime wherever they go. And – as if that weren’t bad enough – they make a horrible crunching noise when I kill them after picking them off my plants. Ew… and now I feel like a horrible person…

Honestly snails weren’t even on my radar when I went out to check on my seedlings. When I came out to this disaster my first thought was squirrels or birds.

But that didn’t make sense. Those seedling pots are sitting very gingerly on shelves. (I know because I’ve knocked a fair amount of them over when watering.) So it’s hard to imagine the weight of a bird or squirrel wouldn’t leave a few knocked-over pots to help me narrow down my hungry culprit.

So I posted my pictures in a gardening Facebook group, asking for help. And when someone suggested the problem was slugs or snails, I instantly knew that was it.

I haven’t cleaned out the pots holding the remnants of my pepper seedlings; I’m interested to see whether the seedlings can bounce back. But I’m not very optimistic. I’m more concerned about my other seedlings. In an attempt to save them, I filled a shallow tupperware with beer and set it out among my remaining seedlings. My hope is that the snails will be drawn to the beer, crawl in the tupperware, and drown. (I say this in the most non-sadistic way possible…) I go out at night to check on my seedlings and the tupperware of beer. I haven’t found any snails in the beer yet, so I’m pretty skeptical about this trick which I’ve heard about from other gardeners. But I have caught a few snails red-handed on my seedlings. Luckily I’ve caught them before they’ve done any serious damage and was able to handpick them off. So, so far, I’ve been able to keep my snail problem at bay. Knock on wood…