Unexpected Foods - brussel sprouts

[crucify]

So my snails aren't a huge fan of cabbage. Neither am I, disgusting stuff. It's harder to keep plenty of lettuce handy in the Christmas season since stepping near a supermarket has a 90% chance of you being trampled, and it's freezing outside. We went to this frozen food trade warehouse, and I saw these huge stems of brussel sprouts and thought, hey I'll try it. It's in the cabbage family and they'll probably hate it but it's £2, as long as their 75ltr tank and the stalk is huge, so it's worth a go. It'll look pretty too. I just checked on them and it turns out they love it, surprisingly enough. They're very fond of the stems branching outwards.



Those parts there. They're trimmed back but still each is more than enough to feed several snails for a few nights. One chewed a hole in the leaves at the top and snuggled into them, they're later waking up today so I'm going to check on the results tomorrow.

Anyone else experiment with something and it turned out the snails loved it?

[malacophile]

Potato! I had part of a potato left over and I wondered if they'd eat it. I sliced it up and gave it to them. To my surprise, they really seemed to enjoy it. I suspect they may have liked the starches, which brussels sprouts are also fairly high in.

Dandelion greens were also an unexpected favorite. There are some huge ones in my area, so I decided to see if they'd eat them. I shouldn't have been surprised that they ate them so ravenously, as dandelion is related to lettuce.

[crucify]

I've never fed them potatoes other than sweet potato, I should try it out. Mine love dandelions, I pick them out of the garden whenever they're growing for a bit of a calcium boost. Never been refused by any of my bugs, dandelion leaves seem like a favorite overall.

[Cashell]

Haven't given my snails cabbage in ages, so I can't remeber how well the respond to it, but brussel sprouts do sound like something interesting to try.

[crucify]

Turns out they absolutely love the stems. I picked a few off for the GALS, instantly started chewing on them. We all hate actual brussel sprouts so I guess we can buy them on the stalk, cut them off and leave the rest for the snails to gnaw on.

[muddydragon]

i've never tried my guys with brussel sprouts but the snails in the garden do nibble on them (as does the dog who just neatly pinches a few when we're not looking!)

I'll have to try mine with the stems when we're done with the plants!

[Zorst]

The snails here love sprouts n the whole plant, they also love the beet root tops n beets as well as young dock leaves.

Basically I took a look at what the snails here were eating in the wild n the veg patch n tried the same with the pet snails.

Young blackberry n raspberry leaves are another fav as are any of the dandy lion types.

Ash tree / rowan tree leaves and wood is another, I found this out when clearing some branches from a few trees that were hanging over the track. Some types of snail like eating the black n greenfly on the bark n leaves as well.

As I took down the branches I noticed that they were covered in 5 different types of snails, busy munching away at the branches. So I left the cut branches in the hedge for the wild snails, and took a few bits home which I'd carefully removed the wild snails from and returned them to the wild, then I washed what I bought home n gave it to the pet snails.


The pet snails loved it , they also like apple wood n leaves but not as much as the ash n Rowan.

Zorst

[mangoandlemon]

Good to know.

[tangowhiskeygirl]

We eat a lot of vegetables ourselves, so the snails usually get what we eat. So far, we've noticed that they adore bean sprout and peppers. I have a big artichoke in the fridge, that will be fun to see if they appreciate

[Zorst]

OHH Beanshoots, havent tried them on those yet, when I next make up a stir fry I'll get some n see what they think. Havent tried artichoke either, let me know what they think of it.

Zorst

[tangowhiskeygirl]

They tasted it! But I think it was a bit too hard for their liking. We're trying fresh herbs this week. Basil seems to go down well

[etana]

Frozen-stored peas are a weird one, sometimes my snails just make faces at them and don't have any, but other times they run to eat them and everything's gone by the next morning. The skins of the peas must be broken first though.

I had pieces of sweet peppers on offer for the snails, some had seeds in them. The seeds fell off and my snails stirred the soil underneath so I didn't notice until there were sprouts. Then the snails ate the sprouts. Um, okay.

[kb.trekkie]

Frozen peas are an interesting idea...