French cuisine anyone?

Snail hunting

If you haven’t gone out with a torch on a damp, spring evening- do it.  Honestly, this is the best way I know to get heaps of snails.  I could be all touchy feely and ask WHY are the snails there? Or be very Permaculture and say I don’t have a snail problem, I have a lack of ducks.   I'm not quite ready for ducks yet here in suburbia!

Basically snails hibernate over winter, they find a snuggly spot, then they wake up hungry in the spring and like much of nature they get frisky and want to procreate. It has occurred to me that there is actually quite a bit of protein in the 2 litres or more of ice-cream containers chock full of snails! We either need a French restaurant which I could supply(lol) or...well I'm open to suggestions.  A food source for something?? Aquaponics?  

 I've noticed that slugs and snails come out at night, and they eat damaged and dying leaves.  They don't actually seem to go for healthy leaves- as a first option.  Because its spring and Im just really aware of the tenderness of the little seedlings I'm planting out...it gets me thinking about snails and how they could be used.  Currently I feed them to Paua the bantam, the other chooks don't seem to be bothered with them.  Another cheap protein for Paua anyway.

I've got these Kamokamo seedlings ready to plant out around my garden, they will take up quite a bit of space once they get going for it, so I'll plant quick things around them like lettuce and radish- then by the time they start sending out their kawai, those will be done.  This will be too many for my household- but when we're sick of them, we'll give them out to friends and whanau.  The other thing is they are hungry and thirsty (but not water on the flowers & leaves- which would be good conditions for powdery mildew).  These seeds come from the MacDonald whanau in Shannon, THANK YOU.   Last growing season out of the hundreds of gardens I went to visit- Shannon people consistently had the best kamokamo, not to say there weren't plenty in other places, but yeah Shannon's got some good seed, good gardeners and good conditions.

Here are a few snaps of the seedlings that have recently been planted out.  I plant them in the soil, with compost (from my bins) scattered around then a good layer of wood chips.  I got the wood chips really cheap, $10 for 2 trailer loads! And since I'm conscious of trying to get carbon back into the soil, this is my main mulch this spring.  Of course mulch does the other stuff all mulch does, like slow down weeds so way less weeding and holds in the water, so less watering and water wastage.  I heard last night from a weather guy on the radio that the rest of Nov and Dec will be hot and dry- not many rain days.  This is good for people and Christmas parties but I want to lay down some protection for the soil before the water restrictions possibly come.

I've put in various tomatoes, and here's a cute little one- note the companion plantings of marigold Ive got in there too.  

Here's a shot of one of my mini wheelie bins.  Its in easy reach so I can weed from a couple of raised beds and reach it.  It does get hot even tho its small.  It's got a lid- that doesn't get lost! and its on wheels, so easy as to get around.