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Mark Thorson Mark Thorson is offline
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Default Ever raise snails?

notbob wrote:
>
> On 2009-12-26, Mark Thorson > wrote:
>
> > It looked easy. According to what I've read,
> > snails need dirt to eat, in addition to food
> > and water. The dirt is removed when they are
> > put on their purge diet.

>
> This is a pretty old subject. Ever since a French restaurateur came
> to CA and discovered the same species of snail they go gaga over in
> France is the same as the one CA gardeners consider the most


That would be Francois Picart. I have his book.

> relentless pest in the state. It became all the rage and there were
> even local escargot clubs that put out a howto pamphlets on how to go
> about it. This all back in the early 80s and after a mad dash to
> become prolific snail herders, the fad finally lost popularity and
> slowed to a crawl. (snork)
>
> Basically, you let 'em munch whatever you got, ground hugging ivy's
> being a fave, then feed 'em corn meal for a few days to purge. Keep
> flat boards (1x8,12s, etc) suspended an inch or less off the ground
> giving the snails a place to rest on the underside, which these are
> then easily picked up and scraped for harvesting. Other than those
> basics, I didn't get into it. There must be a tons of specifics on
> it out there somewhere.


The problem with the Picart approach is that it is
outdoors and it is big. I want a system that is
indoors and compact. I think that should be possible.