permaculture

["Marsha Hanzi" <hanzibra@svn.com.br>]

Our tropical sanils are detritus mobilizers, normally chew away at leaves,
fruit and flowers that have dropped, doing no damage to the live plants.
They damaged the little plants in my garden chewing away at the compost,
more than eating the actual plantlings, which got uprooted in the process.

However, in my neighbor's yeard, "nice and clean comme il faut", where there
IS no detritus left lying on the soil, they eat the plants-- no other
option...

Oh well..

Marsha


----- Original Message -----
From: georg parlow <georg@email-me.at>
To: permaculture <permaculture@franklin.oit.unc.edu>
Sent: Friday, June 16, 2000 1:41 PM
Subject: Re: Snail Farming.


> >But, in another quirky twist, she's not
> >seen a single snail! The land is pretty wild, and maybe the snails
couldn't
> >stand up to natural predators not present in sheltered town gardens
>
> well, looking at it the deep way snails as well as slugs serve a purpose
> where they are. apparently is is connected with healing the land - a
fairly
> famous organic market grower couple in austria (they wrote a book or two
on
> their method, including heavy mulch, live mulch, no till, no machines, no
> manure-imports, vegan lifestyle, direct sales via enrollment only, etc)
> recently shared, that they used to have a big but shrinking snail problem
> for the first 13 years on their property. then they havent been an issue
at
> all for 10 or more years until they introduced a sub-surface irrigation
> system a couple of years ago.
>
> after 13 years of their way to care for the land and do their thing they
> thing that the very high organic content and the stabilized ph relieved
the
> snails from their job. when they dug up their garden for the pipes they
> disturbed the delicate balance, so now they are back. but they reckon that
> the snails and slugs will be gone again before long.
>
> greetings
> georg
>
>
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