Small earwig infestations?

nao57

Crowing
Mar 28, 2020
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So this morning I went out to water the garden early. Before sun up. IF you've never done this, its a good experience because this is how you can spot a lot of the vermin. You won't see a lot of the insect pests out during the heat of the day.

Anyway; I have... small earwig infestations on some small garden plants. These are like... tiny earwigs, not full size (Unsure if adult or not.) For most pests I know what to do. But not these ones. What do people do for earwigs?

I was very amazed. I came out and some of the plants had like 50 of these little buggers on them. And I'd seen leaf damage earlier this week so I knew something was going on. I just hadn't identified which bug it was. (This is why darkness inspections with a flashlight can be useful.)

Anyway... What can you use to treat for these? Part of the issue is that they leave as soon as you come out to get them. They leave the plant except to eat also, and go underground-ish. So this means, I wasn't sure if the same formula to treat for aphids would also work for these, because these DON'T STAY at the site of the damage. With aphids, they stay there and fester until you killl them. So this leaves you with questions of if the same spray of dishsoap and vinegar w water would still work for them?

Plus, how much vinegar can be used on a small garden plant without harming it? This question also didn't come up with orchard trees because orchard trees are bigger.

Thank you for any advise on this. And WOW, I'm getting so much vermin issues this year. I'm used to just having to do a few small treatments and then be in the clear. But the plants are still small where I'm at because with higher elevation our spring starts later... and then we're already in the heat with small plants that are sort of undersize. Which doesn't help at all for problems; makes any problems bigger.

Edited in: also netting won't work because they are coming from under the plants, and because of how boxes are set up with the plants in them.
 
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I have a new observation to report. All the earwig infestations are confirmed to be from steer compost that came from out of state. :S I still needed the compost, so I'll just have to accept this. But all the earwig infestations popped up days after watering the dry compost that was then on vegetable plants. And one by one every time it occurred. This is 1 observation.

The 2nd thing to report, is that I would check for the earwigs at night. Doing so, meant I had to go by the flowers on the way to the garden. I noticed that the EARWIGS like to try to eat lavender blossoms! I think very few people know this! So if you have lavender blossoms you can go out after dark and knock them off the flowered stalks of the lavender strands. They go up and sit up at the top of where the little flowery buds end at the end of the stalk.

This also means its possible they get into other peoples flowers at night also of other flower species. (This I don't know the full extent of). But they are always gone by sun up.
 
I remember having an earwig infestation here, it drove me nuts, they were everywhere.
Sorry I don’t have any advice on how to get rid of them they just disappeared after a short time when the environment wasn’t right for them.
Hope they are not white though as this implies termites, something we have to be aware of here in sw France.
hugz
 
I have a pretty bad infestation but I find them too cute to do anything 🥲
IMG_2323.jpeg
 
I guess we have vastly different definitions of "cute," but at least you're taking their presence with some good humor, @Logar.

On my garden plants, I've sprayed Neem oil to try to discourage them. In other places, I've diluted citronella essential oil into a spray bottle of water and saturated their favorite gathering places.
 
So... to follow up on this. The dishsoap and water spray works very well. But it costs me getting up in the middle of the night to spray them a couple times a week. I've verified it works.

But I was curious to ask if those ant traps that use sweet syrup juice in them would also work for ear wigs?

Stuff similar to this (but doesn't have to be just like it)->

https://www.amazon.com/TERRO-T300B-...hvlocphy=&hvtargid=pla-4583589101616198&psc=1

...

I asked on this since it could be possible to rig something homemade with sugar syrup or corn syrup or something WITHOUT having to lose sleep. XD
 

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