We've been invaded by small white snails this year. They're everywhere, even on the leaves of the daylily plants.

That being said, I don't see any actual damage to the plants.

Interestingly enough, one article on snail control suggested planting a few plants in your garden that repel snails, including, daylily plants. Go figure.

What damage, if any, do these tiny little mollusks do?

I'd have to see a picture of what you are calling white snails, but we have some very small white snails around here and I once heard that they don't do any harm and may actually eat slug eggs and small slugs. That's always a good thing. I've never seen any of the "white snails" on the foliage (unlike slugs), just underneath pots and such...........Maryl

Is it the white garden snail?
http://entnemdept.ufl.edu/crea...

Seedfork said:Is it the white garden snail?
http://entnemdept.ufl.edu/crea...

I believe so, yes.

Here are a couple of photos. Note how tiny the snails are, compared to a leave in the one photo and a spent scape in the other.

Well after reading that they can defoliate trees, I would be very concerned about them being on the daylilies. The article states that they like to climb vertical objects (daylilies) for "aestivation" a sort of dormancy. I would think they would be like any other snail or slug and chop down on the daylily leaves when they are hungry.

Seedfork said:Well after reading that they can defoliate trees, I would be very concerned about them being on the daylilies. The article states that they like to climb vertical objects (daylilies) for "aestivation" a sort of dormancy. I would think they would be like any other snail or slug and chop down on the daylily leaves when they are hungry.

So far, I have seen no evidence of foliage damage.

Keep a close watch on them and let us all know what you see, it will be interesting to see just what they do.

Seedfork said:Keep a close watch on them and let us all know what you see, it will be interesting to see just what they do.

Interestingly enough, this is the first time we've seen snails in the garden, and we've been at the location for more than a dozen years.

Update on snails.

They're still around. In fact, they're climbing up the walls of the house. I haven't discovered any damage to any plants, and they sure as heck aren't eating the siding of the house. That being the case, we're just ignoring them for the moment.

We have had an infestation of very small white snails mainly on the daylilies this year and last. I'm 73 years old and have never seen them before in my life. I find that they suck the life out of the vein of the leaves and eventually the leaf dies. I have been fighting them off with everything I can find on-line that says will get rid of these pests. Nothing seems to work, including snail bait, coffee grounds and coffee and ashes from the wood stove. It seems to cut back on the number of them but they never die off. EEEEEK, I am sick of these guys. It's gross but I've gotten to the point where I just squeeze them between my fingers to kill them. Then of course I wash the sticky stuff off my hand. I can sometimes kill 20 of them in one snail hunt.

kathlelande,

I grow a lot of my daylilies in a bog area, and I use a ton or oak leaves and pine straw as mulch. So for a couple of years I ended up with a lot of slugs and snails. I found that ammonia mix up in a squirt bottle would do the trick and I enjoyed the snail hunt. After about two years of this early in the season, my snail and slug problem went away. You can play around with the solution ratio, but I think I found that as little as 1 in 10 ammonia to water still worked. I would set the sprayer to stream and could hit them from probably 8 feet away if needed. They just melt and die. I did the same for my hosta , and solved that problem also.

I wonder if there's something else going on too because it doesn't really sound like snail damage. Any chance you could post a picture of them?