Ruud Kleinpaste: Dinner from the Garden - Saturday Morning with Jack Tame

This is the moment when adult Huhu Beetles emerge from their rotting logs. If you are nearby a forest (especially a pine forest) you will be familiar with the sharp collision noises on your kitchen window when preparing dinner. Those huhu beetles fly towards the light and crash audibly.  

They’ve spent a few years as huhu grubs in dead wood, where they help with the decomposition – ashes to ashes, dust to dust!  

The grubs, of course, are a famous New Zealand delicacy: massive bits of protein can be quickly fried in a pan with a bit of salt and pepper (or even other fancy condiments). Just be prepared to prick a few holes in the body of this massive grub so that you won’t get any exploding internal body segments! Happened to me – just look at my kitchen ceiling!  

Some kids would be keen to help you out in the kitchen – it’s practical curricular topic to discuss the necessary search for alternative proteins in our country.  

Talking about alternative proteins: Slugs and Snails are a real pest in the garden at this time of the year – moisture and new plant growth encourages them, and eggshell barriers don’t work at all  

Control measures that work:   

Weed control will expose them to predators (thrushes). Give your local song thrush (which might be nesting in or near your garden) an “anvil” to smack the shells of snails on – a large flat (decorative!) rock is perfect. 

Using Bait pellets in a pottle dug into soil. A take-away container with lid on and bait inside, with holes cut in the side of the container to let slugs and snails in but prevent dogs and cats from getting at the bait. 

An alternative version is to use some off cuts (15-30 cm long) of plastic wastepipe with a diameter of 50 to 75mm, which allows access to slugs and snails, but not to birds. Put some bait in the pipes and anchor them down with a heavy brick. They also love to hide in half grapefruit skins (upside-down). 

Encourage Carabid beetles (Ground beetles) – they often feed on slugs and snail juveniles and eggs. 

“Hunt-and-kill evening” with the kids (at full moon?) – always a good excursion after dinner. Grab a headlight torch and a bucket to collect them in… night sleuthing! Remember: these hermaphrodites can produce a few hundred eggs each, so reducing populations now makes good sense.  

Trapping under cloth, planks, and other artificial cover. Slugs and snails love that cover as it increases relative humidity and stops them from drying out. 

Around the wooden outside of raised beds, put a strip of copper foil, almost all the way around, plus a sizeable 6 Volt battery providing power to both ends of the copper strip. This creates a nice current that they are reluctant to cross, and it protects your vegies/seedlings. 

But... why not eat them?  

In France, the brown garden snail (originally from North Africa) is the second-preferred species of escargot for human consumption.  

Collect the fattest ones and eat them! That will make you an invasivore!  

Escargot - pourquoi pas?  

Cantareus aspersus is, to us, an exotic species of snail. It is commonly accepted that it was introduced to New Zealand by the French around the early 1860s. The reason for this is really simple: the brown garden snail is highly prized as escargot in the Mediterranean region. In fact, it has always been the preferred back-up for the slightly larger, but closely related vineyard snail (Helix pomatia).  

Recently I read that European populations of Cantareus have become depleted as a result of non-sustainable over-harvesting of wild specimens. These days the species is the subject of heliciculture, the captive rearing of these delicacies, also known as snail farming.  

I suppose there may be a few people out there who can