Mystery solved!

PeonyLover 5/28/2012, 12:35 pm

Finally, after many night bug hunt missions-mystery solved! Earwigs! Those little buggers have been munching my potato and pepper leaves. Now on to getting rid of them. I will not use chemicals in my garden, so I think I'll start with beer traps. Unless any of you have suggestions?

**donnainzone5** 5/28/2012, 12:47 pm

Sluggo Plus, which is for organic gardening.

**gwennifer** 5/28/2012, 1:49 pm

This guy uses homemade vegetable oil traps.

Another homemade trap idea I've read is to use drinking straws. Put peanut butter in one end and cover with tape. Earwigs will crawl in and get stuck.

Let us know what you try and what works!

**gwennifer** 5/28/2012, 1:57 pm

This one is even easier - uses the oil and doesn't bother with the slits and covers. Just little dishes of oil. Wow does he catch a lot of earwigs. Shocked

Hope you don't have that many!

PeonyLover 5/28/2012, 3:04 pm

Going to try some oil traps tonight. I'll let you all know what I catch.

yolos 5/28/2012, 6:08 pm

What kind of oil was he using to bait the traps. I don't think he actually named the type of oil.

**gwennifer** 5/30/2012, 11:18 am

People asked about the type of oil in the comments. Sounds like it just doesn't matter. Vegetable oil, canola oil, olive oil... He said any of those are fine.

PeonyLover, did you try it?

PeonyLover 5/30/2012, 1:03 pm

Sorry, didn't update sooner. Busy week for our house as its the last week of school here. Ok. I used some vegatable oil (we have stopped using it-but found a bottle in the pantry) in ramekins sunk a little in the potato box, and by the peppers. It worked. It trapped like 5 or 6 the first night and only a couple more the next. I think I got ahead of the problem as there were none this morning and I don't think any more chopping. I did remove the most damaged leaves so I could tell if there was new damage. I will Definately continue to use these as needed.

Triciasgarden 5/30/2012, 2:04 pm

The oil sounds like a great idea! I hadn't thought about earwigs eating my potato plant leaves and since I seem to have earwigs, that would make sense.

Another idea for getting rid of earwigs is you get newspapers and roll them up into a tube like shape. The earwigs will crawl into them and you just bag them up in a sealed bag (so they don't crawl out) and throw them away.

I will try the oil and newspaper ideas, especially before my corn gets taller. The earwigs love my corn when it gets the silk. I have a long way to go before that happens though.

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