Garlic Spray for Gardens

{image from Martha Stewart}

I planted flower and vegetable seeds in May and something was munching on them as soon as they sprouted...not good for tiny little plants. I found some guilty-looking snails nearby. Although I think snails are cute (really, I do) I didn't want my garden destroyed so I decided to try some garlic spray which is supposed to work as a snail and slug repellent. I made some garlic spray years ago to get rid of aphids on some house plants (it worked well), but I no longer had the recipe so I decided to try this one. So far, so good...the plants are doing quite well now.

Here are some garlic spray tips I found from various articles:

• Test on sensitive plants first...spray one or two and wait a few days to spray the rest so you can make sure there's no damage
• Don't spray in the heat of the day, try early morning or late evening
• It looks like this could be harmful to smaller beneficial insects, so I wouldn't use this if you can see ladybugs or other helper bugs on your plants
  
• Mix a new batch every time you want to spray since the garlic spray has no preservatives
  

Hopefully I can work on attracting birds and toads to my garden since they natural enemies to snails (I guess snakes are too but I'll pass on those). I would feel better about an animal having a little escargot snack than trying to get rid of the snails in other ways.