Snakes and No Dig Gardens
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Snakes and No Dig Gardens

by Gayla
(Kansas City, KS)

We have a lot of snakes around here, how do you keep them out of the No Dig Gardens?


Doug says you don't. While snakes are not the favorite creatures of many folks, they are incredibly useful in your garden. Snakes chow down on more slugs (common in heavily mulched gardens) than you can believe. They love grasshoppers and all kinds of slow moving plant pests.

So - bottom line, snakes are good guys in the garden. They don't eat plants but they do eat the pests that eat plants.

They're welcome in my garden any time.

So while you don't like them - they are impossible to stop (you can't fence them etc) and they do good things.

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Snakes and No Dig Gardens

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Asking snakes to leave...
by: Mona Lisa Abbott

I've always been told to make some noise when you enter snake territory, and also snakes "hear" with vibrations to their tongue, so I think to make some verbal and physical commotion when entering their turf is good, using a stick ahead of you to poke around the ground, and I think usually its best to freeze if a rattler is within striking distance. Might be hard for you to do.
snakes etc
by: Doug

The deal is simple. Snakes don't respect fences or gardener's wishes. You can't keep them out of the garden if they want to go in there. Period.

I'm sorry you feel this way but nothing I can tell you from the snake's point of view. Many folks have a phobia about snakes. It's only justified if you live in a tropical country that's full of poisonous snakes (and then it's not a phobia, it's caution.) :-)
Snakes and No Dig Gardens
by: Barbwire59

Well Doug, that's all great and wonderful that snakes are actually "good" for something, but this visually impaired gardener would prefer the snakes vacate the premises when I want access to the garden. So how do I politely ask them to leave for a bit?

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