January – the bleakest month of the year in our garden and one where it is a good idea to stay inside as much as possible and make resolutions.
While drawing up my list for 2025, I started thinking about snails and how to manage them in our garden.
Last year was so wet in France that we were inundated with them. My mind drifted to another garden I visited a couple of years ago.
Each September, France hosts les Journées européenes du patrimoine when, for one weekend, heritage properties are open to the public.
We had decided to visit Château de Mongenan, just south of Bordeaux, which we chose because the gardens, as well as the chateau itself, were of interest.
We joined a group of French visitors on a guided tour of the gardens and all stopped to admire a bed of dahlias which, to be blunt, had been ravaged by snails.
“Oh snails”, I said, “I don’t know what to do to get rid of them. I’ve tried beer traps, picking them off individually and copper barriers. Nothing works.”
A French woman looked at me in dismay. “You eat them,” she exclaimed, clearly horrified at my wastefulness. A second woman joined the conversation and added that she had an extremely good recipe for escargot à la bordelaise which she would be very happy to give me.
Can you eat the garden snail? I decided to investigate.
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Edible snails
Although there are many types of snail in France, there are really only three which are eaten. These are the European garden snail (the guys who had eaten all the dahlias), the Turkish snail and the Burgundy snail. The Burgundy snail, which is also called the land lobster, the gros blanc and the escargot des vignes, is considered the best for culinary purposes.
Burgundy snails are most prolific in the Alps where, at lower latitudes, they are active all year round, although they are most visible after rain as they love humidity but do not actually like getting wet.
They fatten up in the autumn as they eat more to survive the rigours of winter, so this is when they are considered at their best. They will be harvested by hand in late autumn and then taken to be processed.
In the first half of the 20th Century, no doubt driven by the privations of war, these snails were seriously over-harvested in France and this, together with the mechanisation of the processing procedure and use of agricultural chemicals, has caused them to become a threatened species.
Since 1979, it has been illegal to collect them during their main breeding season (April to the end of June). Nowadays, they are considered to be a traditional Christmas and New Year treat.
You cannot simply pick a snail off your dahlias and cook it – there would be a significant risk of food poisoning and parasitic infection.
The snails have to be purged by a diet of “clean” food – such as porridge oats or fresh green vegetables – and then cleaned and starved. They are then cleaned again and finally cooked, so it is not a process for the inexperienced.
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French love affair with snails
The French have eaten them since pre-Christian times, although it was not until Napoleon's chief diplomat Talleyrand served them up to Tsar Alexander in 1814 that they became fashionable.
France is still the world’s biggest consumer of snails – although today they are mostly imported.
Having done my research, I decided against eating my garden snails – far better to try and manage them organically.
I have been told that they loathe garlic (perhaps they associate it with being eaten). Spraying vulnerable leaves with a garlic infusion is said to be an effective deterrent.
They also dislike dry environments – so gravel gardens are much less snail-friendly than rich, moist humus.
They also have natural predators; birds, small mammals and insects rely on them for food. One insect predator is the glow worm – known as a “luciole” in French.
These little insects are actually beetles and they congregate where snails live.
We see them on warm summer nights when they gather at the damp base of our garden tap.
We love seeing the lucioles and joined a society which monitors and protects them (L’Observatoire des Vers Luisants), but, of course, without snails we would not have glow worms.
So I will not be eating my garden snails in 2025, but one resolution will be to garden alongside them using natural deterrents and appreciating the role they play in nature’s plan.
