Slugs or something else?

[pooklette]

Okay - I've had it. Something has been chowing on my plants for weeks now and it's getting worse, not better. Maybe you guys can help me sort out who/what the culprit is.

This bug has completely stripped some tomato plants, lettuce, radishes, turnips, and kohlirabi. Other tomatoes, broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage and lettuce varieties have been munched on but not completely defoliated yet. The leaves are stripped down to the veins and smaller leaves are stripped all the way down to the stem in the worst cases. In the lighter areas of feeding, it seems like the leaves are often being munched from the edges toward the middle.

I am not seeing anything that I'd call a shiny or silvery trail that would suggest slugs. I'm not seeing beetles or any other bugs out there for that matter. (And I'm positive there are no hornworms...yet, at least.) I haven't been able to do a bug check at night though.

I've sprinkled Slug & Snail Bait by Garden Safe twice. I sprayed the plants yesterday with Fungicide3 (which is supposedly a fungicide, insecticide and miticide) also by Garden Safe. When I checked the plants this evening, I discovered that a few plants had been stripped down to the leaf veins overnight or sometime while I was at work today.

Sigh. This just seems like a slug thing to me. I'm not seeing any other culprit so it seems like the bad guy must be coming out at night. Maybe I need to try different slug bait or deterrant? Or maybe it's a different critter entirely?

I'm looking for a possible bug ID and also some inexpensive and preferably organic suggestions to defeat this evil-doer...

Thanks!

[COgarden]

Here where I live that would sound like a very bad case of earwigs. I've seen literally 50 of them feeding on a single green bean sprout, though in an infestation of your magnitude I'm sure you would have seen MANY of them, even during the day. Those things will even eat RHUBARB leaves! Interestingly, I've never seen them eating my tomato plants. In bad years they hide in my tomatoes but don't seem to do any real damage.

Anyway, if I were you I would definitely be planning a late, very late, night visit to the garden with a flashlight. Without it, I would never have found the culprit in my situation. I would almost guarantee you will catch the little buggers in the act. If you do find the source of your problems, please post, I'd love to see who the guilty critter is!

Kurt

[pooklette]

Holy buckets - you're right! I went out there with a flashlight tonight and I saw the little buggers immediately! How do I get rid of those guys? I'd like to stay as close to organic as possible...

[COgarden]

Well at least you know what you are dealing with. Unfortunately the only solution I've found is Sevin. Very far from organic, I know, but it is very effective. The only plants I've had real problems with has been green beans. I've found in seasons where they are really bad here I have to time one or maybe two applications right after the seedlings emerge. Once the beans aren't so young and tender the earwigs are less interested. I never use any insecticide in my garden at any other time. If anyone has any other treatments that are less harsh but just as effective I'd love to hear about it!

Interesting thing is that I haven't seen a single one this season, not even on my green bean seedlings. From what I've seen they tend to go crazy in cool wet springs.

Good luck, I'm looking forward to input from others here...

Kurt

[COgarden]

Oh yeah, just had another thought. I've read in several places to use a damp rolled-up newspaper as a sort of trap. Set it out near your plants in the evening. Then in the morning pick it up and dump it in a trash bag. It never worked for me though, even after many different arrangements. They just love my straw mulch too much to leave it. Anyway, it might be worth a try before you drop the bomb with Sevin.

Kurt

[dice]

Some suggestions:

http://www.ghorganics.com/page9.html#Earwigs:

If you hadn't already seen the earwigs, I would have
guessed cutworms, which out here in the PNW can
do as much damage as slugs or snails. I think BT
(beneficial bacteria) will kill those, and some people
use metal collars around the bases of plants that
cutworms find annoying to crawl over (like a tin can
with both ends removed, or a short piece of metal
flashing crimped together at the ends).

[pooklette]

Tonight I'm trying the shallow dish full of vegetable oil trick. If I find even one dead earwig in there I'll do a happy little dance. I did douse our flower garden in Sevin the other night. We don't eat the flowers and that garden is far from the veggies so I figured, why not? Many, many dead little evil-doers the next day. If only there was an organic solution that would anhilate them as effectively...

If the vegetable oil dish thing doesn't work, perhaps I'll have to hunt down a source for diatomaceous earth. That sounds pretty harmless for use around food...right?

[pooklette]

Bwahahaa! Dead earwigs!

The one shallow container of vegetable oil I put in the garden last night has at least 25-30 dead earwigs in it this morning. I will be putting out a few more tonight and I think I'll try to sink them down in the mulch a bit so they're more level with the surface.

I'm curious to see if we can reduce enough of the population to save my plants this way. They've moved from decimating the turnips, kohlirabi and lettuce to gnawing on my cauliflower now. I have a few tomato plants that are trying to rally after being completely defoliated too. I hope this keeps working because I don't have any backup plants left!

[dice]

You can try the inverted bottle thing: cut off the
top of a 16oz plastic soft drink or water bottle,
drop some bait in the bottom of the bottle (tuna,
for example, or bananas, or cat food, ...), invert
the top of the bottle, and tape it in place with
duct tape.

Earwigs will crawl in, but they are unable to find
their way out again.

If you float the bait in vegetable oil, water, etc,
they'll drown in it, but I don't know if this is
actually necessary. (If they are trapped in there,
you can just remove the top and vacuum them up,
for example.)

[pooklette]

We put out a few more shallow dishes of vegetable oil yesterday and we've got at least 500 dead earwigs out there now. Part of me is thinking: Ew, I can't believe we have that many earwigs in our garden. The other part of me says: Yay - I found a food friendly solution!

I wonder how many more creepy-crawlies are lurking out there...