Vanderbrew

What do they have in common you may ask? I seem to be getting a lot of people finding my site by looking for solutions to problems they’re having with pests eating their garden produce - especially basil. So, in the interests of trying to provide you all with some good, useful information here’s what I’ve figured out.

Earwigs seem to do the most damage to the crops. Slugs just aren’t that bad and it seems that slugs are easier to control. Once it warms up a bit and dries out, the slug population really drops off - but I haven’t seen the same decline with earwigs.

I don’t want to use any chemicals in my garden so I have to find other ways to control the pests. The best solution I’ve found is this:

1. Wait until it’s a couple hours after dark.
2. Get a small container - I use an old 1 qt plastic yogurt container
3. Fill it 3/4 full of water
4. Put in 3-4 drops of dish soap
5. Get a good flashlight - preferably one you can set down and still have pointing at your plants
6. Go outside, examine your plants, pluck off the little buggers and drop them in the soapy water to drown

There are probably more effective things you can do, but the ones I’ve read about have to be done before they become a real problem by interrupting their lifecycle before spring starts and they begin devouring your garden.

Picking up slugs is a little disgusting at first, but it’s fairly straightforward and oddly satisfying once you get over the slimy/squishy aspect. Often they’ll curl up at the first contact and this can make them more difficult to pick up so move fast. The best advice is don’t hesitate. Just grab them and drop them in. Yes, your fingers will pick up a little layer of slime - deal with it - you’ll go in and wash your hands when you’re done.

Earwigs…oh man, I’m still not used to them. See, they’ve got this really fierce-looking pincer in the back and if you disturb them, they raise it up menacingly. The first place I recommend grabbing them is by the antennae. They may squirm a bit but you should be able to dump them into your soapy water before they get really good and annoying. The second place I recommend picking them up is on the pincer itself. It’s a little unnerving to feel it close between your fingers (parallel to your fingers) but I haven’t been pinched and from what I read, I don’t think it’s likely to happen.

One thing to be careful about earwigs is that they’re quick. They’ll scurry deeper into a plant faster than you would believe and then they’re much harder to get out. A fact in your favor though is that they’re surprisingly fragile beasts. I can kill them and sometimes split them in two with a strong flick. Just hold your index or middle finger with your thumb, line up and hit them in the middle of their body with your nail. If you’re pinning them against a hard surface like solid dirt or a rock, they’re pretty much dead. Otherwise there’s a chance that you’ll still kill them and worst case, they’re still off your plant.

Always keep in mind that the objective is to kill them. The objective is not to drop them in the soapy water - that just happens to be an effective way of killing them. If they’re scurrying (or sliming) their way across the ground or pavement, a good stomp with a sliding motion towards you and a twist at the end is just as effective and more efficient. Be careful that you don’t get so caught up in drowning the pests that you forget that you’re out there to kill them in whatever way you can.

Another thing - always make several rounds. Look in each bed or growing space you’ve got. Look on the patio, near the fence, along the walk. Now do it again. And again. I generally make three loops around my beds and I find something on almost every loop.

Don’t ignore a small slug just because it’s small. A small slug does damage too and he’s only a small slug today. Tomorrow he’ll be bigger. Next week he’ll mow down your parsley sprouts.

Look under the leaves, not just on top. Look at the dirt around your plants, not just on them. Look at the entire height of the plant, not just around the base. If you’ve got poles for beans or other vegetables, look at the poles. The other night I found an earwig about 3.5 feet up a pole supporting some pole beans.

Don’t just do it once or twice. Do it several times a week until you see a drop in the damage and your plants are flourishing. I was out there frequently when I was losing so much a few weeks ago. Now I just go out once a week or so and do general patrol to clean up the obvious ones and minimize the damage. I don’t think that you’ll ever really get rid of all of the damage to your plants and that’s not really my goal. I just want to reduce the damage so that I have something to harvest and cook with later in the season.

I find that listening to an audio book makes it a better experience. No one (at least, I don’t) wants to go out into their garden after dark to grab bugs off of their herbs and vegetables. Listening to a book (or music, if you want) makes the time pass and lets you focus on something else while you’re performing a task with pretty minimal attention and intelligence requirements.

So, good luck, bug hunters. I hope that this helps. Drop me a comment if you have further questions, feedback on how it went or suggestions on how to make it better.

This entry was posted on Sunday, June 11th, 2006 at 11:38 pm and is filed under Garden. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.