No, neem will not work on snails or slugs.

Have you tried one of the 'organic' baits, such as Sluggo? The active ingredient is iron phosphate. It can be safely around food crops, pets, kids, etc.

You can also use a copper barrier around your plant or the container. You can cut strips of copper sheeting and wrap it around (like a belt) the container or along the top. You could put a little copper fence around the stems of the plant. Snails and slugs avoid copper like crazy.

I've even used copper window screen, and it worked very well.

Gardens Alive offers an organic snail and slug killer. Its sprinkled on the ground around the plants and will kill the critters. Both like lots of moisture, so using some diatomatous earth (pool filter medium) can also give you a decent barrier. There are also beer traps that work well. Copper is OK, but expensive and once it corrodes to the green color (usually in a few days in wet weather, it looses a bit of its effect.

You could try using a Garlic Spray on your herbs. It washes off, so your herbs won't taste of garlic, but it IS effective against a range of beasties, including snails.

GARLIC SPRAY:
Soak 1/2 cup crushed garlic cloves in 1/2 cup vegetable oil for one week. Add a little liquid soap and dilute the mixture - 1 part mixture to 10 parts water. Garlic spay will kill and repel aphids, woolly aphids, bean fly, stink bugs, crickets, grasshoppers, red spider mite, sawfly larvae, scale, snails, slugs, thrips and caterpillars, mosquitoes and ticks, the adult moths of leaf-miners and mealy bugs. It is an effective fungicide when used 3-4 times a week against potato blight and damping off.
OR
*Crush 100g garlic, 2 chillies and 2 onions and cover with water for 24 hours. Strain and add enough water to make up 2 litres.

Put a little bran in the area, and use it as a bait. They'll head for it, eat it and die, and being all in one place, they'll be easier to pick up and dispose of.

Use human or pet hair (see your local friendly hairdresser or vet!), or wood ashes, or soot, or sawdust as a mulch in the pots. Slugs and snails will avoid travelling over those things!

Snails usually prefer fairly dark, cool and dampish conditions - are you sure this area is suitable for your herbs?

Diatomacious earth is good, but there are horticultural kinds and pool kinds.

The pool kinds are dangerous to use horticulturally. Apparently they have more particles that are more easily inhaled, which can cause respiratory problems.

I bought some of the pool kind origionally, and had to dispose of it after I did some research. Just Google it, and the info should come up.

Also, the pool DE has been "tumbled" and won't kill slugs. So, you are just wasting your money there. Get the horticultural DE and it works great. You may have to reapply several times a year, but it has definitely decreased the slug population here.

I've been using food grade DE which I think is the same as horticultural. I've been using it for years as an all purpose insect and snail killer. The problem is that I have to reapply it rather often and though it lowers the snail population a lot, they come back once the rain washes it away.

I guess I'm looking for herbs that I can put in the area that will survive without snail damage if I get lax on the snail control in that area, which I know I eventually will since I usually concentrate on the back yard where my garden and other herbs are.

I thought I read somwhere that they don't like certain highly scented leaves I just can't find information on which ones.

What I have in mind is rosemary, thyme, oregano and marjoram. It's a decent size area and I think those will fill it out nicely. I'm just wondering if the snails like any of those herbs. I know they love basil.

Ania

I put in oregano, marjoram, thyme and rosemary. So far so good. The snails have not touched any of it. I also planted parsley nearby that they haven't touched that either.

Ania

In my experience - and I live in very sluggy climate - they leave alone most things which are shrubby/woody, strongly aromatic and tough. So rosemary, bay, thyme, oregano are fairly safe. I have had them eat sage which is odd. They don't seem to go for Sorrel.