Dead Snails Leave No Trails: Natural Pest Control for Home and Garden [Paperback]

Loren Nancarrow (Author), Janet Hogan Taylor (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 1, 1996

This comprehensive guide to controlling pests in your home and garden (and even on your pets!) is packed with simple and effective ways to avoid chemical pesticides that can kill off beneficial insects and keep useful reptiles and birds from making anyone's yard their home. Let nature's balance work to your advantage with plants that attract helpful insects and repel destructive ones, all-purpose pest repellants like garlic and chile peppers, and beneficial creatures like bats, green lacewings, hummingbirds, and lizards. Includes safe methods for eliminating ants, roaches, and rodents; ways to get rid of fleas and other critters that plague pets; and even a buying guide to the beneficial organisms you want in your garden (whether you know it or not).

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

No, this isn't a slimy murder mystery! Here's a guide to natural pest control in your home and garden (and even on your pets). It offers simple techniques to help you avoid the use of toxic pesticides and chemicals around the house, and is a welcome alternative to the old "Kills Them Dead" mentality of poison sprays and powders common in the past (which is where they should be--the past). Here's the guide you've been waiting for!

From Booklist

Amid the annual profusion of gardening books, Nancarrow and Taylor's work stands out as an exemplar of entertaining and informative reading. Tackling the tricky question of how to control pests without poisoning the garden--and perhaps the family--the pair comprehensively reviews garden pests and how to stop their fiendish plots against backyard comfort and bounty. Besides a fine glossary and a light yet not cloying tone, the book attractively features boxed tidbits of advice that range from sensible warnings about using various common products to a recipe for a paste to stop the itching of mosquito bites. The pests discussed include everything from bugs to deer, and in this context, the term garden is used in the English sense of one's yard, not just a vegetable garden. Nicely illustrated, and a pleasure to read, Nancarrow and Taylor's effort is sure to make the outdoors more enjoyable for its readers. Mike Tribby

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Product Details

• Paperback: 160 pages
• Publisher: Ten Speed Press; 1St Edition edition (July 1, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0898158524
• ISBN-13: 978-0898158526
• Product Dimensions: 6 x 0.4 x 9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.3 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #162,039 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A COMPLETE AND NATURAL SOLUTION TO GARDEN PESTS, June 11, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Dead Snails Leave No Trails: Natural Pest Control for Home and Garden (Paperback)

I read the entire book from cover to cover with a highlighter in hand. I could not stop reading (and highlighting). This book was exactly what I was searching for. A complete and natural guide to ridding my garden of those pesky pests. I have used many of Loren's "receipes" and can honestly say they work. I would and do recommend this book to anyone who has a love for gardening, a love for nature, and a hate for destructive pests who get in the way.

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Garden companion, May 24, 2003

By 

Enrique Torres "Rico" (San Diegotitlan, Califas) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Dead Snails Leave No Trails: Natural Pest Control for Home and Garden (Paperback)

This is probably the most handy garden book in my collection for quick reference for a variety of maladies. Although it is small in size it is big on help. The author is a local weatherman in San Diego and many of the garden tidbits included on his televison weather segment are in this book. If you want to know to rid your garden of pests in a "humane" way than this book is for you. The recipes are more on the organic natural method as opposed to insecticides. There are plenty of old recipres for geting rid of those unwanted visitors to your garden. The book also provides good information on the beneficial visitors including some of the lesser known variaties. For example, recently I was being "bugged" by these hovering flies that mimic the flying motion of helicopters and I was trying to think of a way to rid my garden of them. After checking this book again I found out they are Syrphid Flies and actually are great pollinators and beneficial for controling aphids. Besides telling you o f the purpose of the insects or critters there are also mini history lessons on the origins of the visitors to your garden. Like this little tidbit of garden facts there are countless other informative ideas to help you have a better garden. Recommended for garden hobbyists who like to read in the garden after putting in some labor.

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An excellent resource!, May 13, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Dead Snails Leave No Trails: Natural Pest Control for Home and Garden (Paperback)

I listened to Loren's tips for years on television. It is nice to have so many of them compiled in one handy resource. The tips contained are cost-effective, easy to use, and far better for people and the enviroment. Highly recommended!